If your main working tools are an easel, dancing shoes or a camera there is a likelihood that you or a close member of your family will require treatment for a psychological condition at some point your lifetime.

People who have creative jobs suffer from psychological illnesses significantly more often than others, according to the conclusions of a population survey from the Swedish Karolinska Institute and published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research.

Authors appear to be worst off. Over and above a 50 per cent increased risk of suicide, writers often have to live with angst, depression and abuse; schizophrenia and manic depression are also part of the picture – the latter two of which dancers and photographers also tend suffer from.

The national research project, which is the most extensive of its type hitherto, has studied the mental health and creative talents of 1.2 million psychiatric patients and their close relatives over the past 40 years.

The project also confirms what Karolinska researchers already established back in 2010 – that families in which psychological ailments are prevalent also have a higher representation of individuals with creative talents.

Part of the explanation is that highly creative individuals and schizophrenia patients have common characteristics in their dopamine system.

The likelihood of finding family members with creative jobs is also prevalent in patients with afflictions such as autism and anorexia.

Simon Kyaga MD, who is a consultant psychiatrist and the main author of the survey, says the results call for a new way of assessing psychiatric illness and its treatment.

“If you see some facets of a patient’s illness as potentially being positive, it opens up new approaches to treatment. The doctor and patient can agree on what should be treated and what can be offered. Up to now, psychiatry and medicine have had a tendency to see illness in a black and white perspective, and tried to remove all traits that can be seen as being sick,” Kyaga says in a news release.

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