norman rockwell suffered depression while painting an idealized world.

[mopinko]

cuz, who else would?

[NYC_SKP]

1. I did not know that.

Great writers and artists and creative folks seem to disproportionately suffer from depression and other maladies, don't they?

[HereSince1628]

2. Maybe, maybe not ... it's popular culture, but the studies aren't so clear...

One of the problems is there is poor evidence for most people's biographies. Those we know tend to be celebrities because something made them notable...so historic leaders, great writers, artists and people who have left behind creative legacies are what's available. It's a very non-random sample.

Within the framework of biography, there is a tendency to emphasize (some would say fictionalize) things which make the celebrity venerable. Reports/vignettes about over-coming adversity are popularly incorporated tropes for non-critical biographers and must be considered with some circumspection.

And technical analysis raises the problem of trying to diagnose something via biographical sketches about people who lived before case definitions were written, or using case definitions that no longer are considered valid. Suspect assignment of individuals to cases makes summary statistics suspect.

A similar semantic problems surrounds the definition of creativity. Are ALL writers and artists creative? Even the one's that never get famous? Are the famous ones more creative than those who never got recognition? How can we know?

If you're interested this link points to a story on a guy who claims expertise on creativity, and a guy who claims the pop claim about the link between mental illness and creativity isn't as robust as many people think it is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-r-keith-sawyer/creativity-and-mental-ill_b_2059806.html

One thing does seem to ground truth about mental illness and famous people. Some famous people, people who are high performing in artistic occupations, are known to have had mental illness. Mental illness appears to strike high and low along the creativity spectrum.

If comparisons to famous people give those with mental illness a sense of hope and possibility in the presence of mental illness there is really nothing at all wrong with that.

If celebrities revealling their illnesses or illnesses of family members helps reduce social stigma about mental illness, there is nothing at all wrong with that, either.