So, J.K. Rowling has said she was suicidal at some points early on, before a publisher had taken Harry Potter on board.  Thankfully, a GP pointed her in the direction of assistance in the form of cognitive behavioural therapy, and a nation – world even – of Potter fans is grateful.

And it’s not just her.  Poets seemingly adopt depression as a career move, though as a strategy for career success it’s a questionable one.  But is there really a link between mental health and creativity?  Well, inasmuch as the state that you’re in will shape the writing that you do, I don’t see why not.  But let’s not get caught up in the romance of the depressed artist: that’s tiresome bullshit.  It was no fun being Spike Milligan a lot of the time, or Ian Curtis, or Dorothy Parker.

Does being depressed give you any extra insight into life?  Hmm.  Maybe it gives you some added perspective about yourself, a subject people tend to think about a lot when they’re down.  But can those understandings really be said to be applicable to the world at large?  That’s a very Eeyore view of things, and not one I buy into. 

Without a doubt, there are aspects of experience of depression or mental illness that can fuel creativity – in Rowling’s case, it’s easy to map the Dementors in her books onto experience of depression.  I nearly wrote ‘profound depression’ there, which would have been to fall into a trap: depression doesn’t have special meaning or give anyone added insight into the functioning of the world, it is more a filter through which life is experienced.

So, a writer’s – or anyone’s – experience of mental health will shape the way they communicate, for sure.  But will it do so more than their experience of being, say, an account executive, a lover, a parent?  I’m not at all convinced that it does. 

At this point I may as well play the expert card: I have been diagnosed bipolar, so should in theory know what I’m talking about.  Only, I don’t especially agree with that diagnosis, and tend much more towards the manic end of things.  And that experience tells me that, again, mental health experience can shape creativity: I come up with some huge all-encompassing ideas at times like those…but I come up with some huge ideas anyway. 

One science fiction epic I’ve toyed with came about after getting tired working on low budget naturalistic short films: I wanted to let rip with something impossible, and did so with glee.  But was that because I’m apparently manic sometimes (this was before I was diagnosed) or because I was bored of grubbing round at the level I’d been caught up in for a while?

So, I’ve got mixed ideas about these things.  I applaud J.K. Rowling for speaking up about a subject that’s still taboo in some respects.  And like the fact that she’s made no explicit connection between her illness and her creativity.  Sure, it’s there, kind of.  But so is the link between depression and car crashes, schizophrenia and Italian food, anorexia and soccer.

In other words, there is a link…if you want to find it.  Problem being, some of the people who’ve forged links between mental health and creativity have mythologised a universal experience, that affects people regardless of whether they’re paid to be creative or not, blowing hot air up the skirts of Dame Art and forgetting everybody else who goes through the same stuff.