Behavioral Health Articles
Mental Illness: a Curse with a Silver Lining?
by Kurt Warner, Contributing Writer
Many of the negative aspects of life are intrinsically linked with positive aspects. The way strenuous, painful exercise lifts our endorphins; the way our suffering so often leads to wisdom; and the way depressing, sunless, rainy days cleanse the earth with life-giving water—these are just a few examples of great negatives generating great positives. This general pattern repeats itself over and over in the fabric of our existence.
This pattern is often visible in the realm of mental illness... especially severe and persistent mental illness. Individuals suffering with mental illness undeniably have been given an incredibly steep mountain to climb in life. In fact serious mental illness is, perhaps, the highest, steepest mountain life can present to an individual.
However, the curse of mental illness is quite often packaged with the gift of brilliance. Rare and desirable traits and faculties are often coupled with the “slings and arrows of outrageous” mental illness. Many sufferers are born with great genius or exceptional talent. Individuals with mental illness quite often exhibit talents and abilities the likes of which the world does not often see.
For example there is, perhaps, no clearer link between mental illness and mental gifts than the link between mental illness and art. Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, illustrates this intriguing link in her book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Dr. Jamison uses her psychiatric expertise to identify artists with mood disorders, including major depression, bipolar disorder (also known as manic depression), and cyclothymia (also called bipolar-light). Well-known poets such as William Blake and Walt Whitman, immortal authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Leo Tolstoy, monumental composers such as Tchaikovsky and Beethoven, and brilliant painters such as van Gogh and Michelangelo are just few of the many bright lights of art and of humanity who would likely be diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness if they were alive today. It seems that disorders in the mood spectrum, in particular, are often coupled with artistic genius.
The gifts many of the mentally ill bring to the table of life are not by any means limited to artistic genius. Incredible leaders such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill suffered from severe and crippling depression. Mathematical genius John Nash, immortalized in A Beautiful Mind, suffers from paranoid schizophrenia.
The Icarus Project is dedicated to exploring this link between mental disorders and creativity. The group’s mission statement says, “We believe we have mad gifts to be cultivated and taken care of, rather than diseases or disorders to be suppressed or eliminated.” The Icarus Project provides a forum for individuals with mental illness to share and discuss their gifts along with their curses, to share their art and other talents, and also provides resources dedicated to increasing awareness and “navigating the space between brilliance and madness."
Individuals with mental illness have a great deal to offer society. Many of these individuals are, in some ways, tapped into a different side of life than most. They are able to see the world from many different angles by what is both their curse and their gift – mental illness. It is incumbent upon society to start, as the Icarus project has started, to welcome individuals with mental illness with open arms into society, and applaud them for the battle they fight daily. Furthermore, society has a moral responsibility to help individuals with mental illness cultivate their many talents to enable them to live fulfilling and complete lives.
Kurt Warner is enrolled in the MSW program at Binghamton University and is completing an internship with Catholic Charities of Cortland County.
The Think Again! Group (TAG), is a local behavioral health task force whose goal is to reduce the stigma associated with mental health issues by increased awareness, education, and accessibility to mental health services. Articles by task force members or interested volunteers appear monthly. To become involved in the taskforce or learn more about emotional or behavioral health, call the Cortland County Mental Health Clinic at 758-6100 and ask for Garra.