Will Bipolar Treatment Kill Creativity?

It was a particularly beloved patient who asked me if I had any advice about improving creativity. She believed, as many people do, that it is a side effect of treating (even a relatively minor form) of bipolar illness. A lot of research back in the days of lithium, one of the first really robust treatments for bipolar illness, strongly suggested it just wasn’t so.

I don’t think bipolar medications reduce creativity. I do think that treating bipolar illness reduces mania. A “happy mania” can include a feeling of elation, being on top of the world, even a feeling of being omnipotent, which MIGHT go along with feeling creative.

I do have a fairly good idea of what feeling more creative does NOT include. It does not seem to include taking drugs. When marijuana intoxication was first the rage, some people found that things created during a marijuana “high” were deliciously outrageous, only to find, when they came down from the “high” that marijuana had also distorted their judgment and they were not that wonderful after all. It also doesn’t seem to be speed, the allied compounds used to treat alleged attention deficit disorder. This seems to make boring things fascinating for a short time, if you can survive the side effects.

So when folks ask me about improving creativity, I usually descend into a litany of anecdotes about great creative folks and their rituals, what Bach would riff off when composing (the work of Buxtehude, an inferior composer at best) and the like. I decided to check up on the neuroscience of creativity. Here is a decent synthesis for the Layperson.

Remember, creativity is as much a virtue for the business-human or scientist as it is for the creative artist. The suggested creativity stimulation exercises are surprisingly banal.

I think the central art here is maintaining a consuming curiosity about field other than what you specialize in.