Creativity

How do we define creativity?

Creativity is the ability of individuals to develop novel and useful products. Novelty, originality, innovation, ingenuity are some of the words often used to define creativity. But originality is just one component of creativity. There is another essential aspect of creativity – the idea should be effective, useful or productive. 

Creativity exists in many domains and is not just limited to the arts, as most people seem to think. Creativity is at work behind most scientific inventions, innovative gadgets, health technologies and economic theories which have changed the world.

Individuals differ in their propensity and capacity to be creative. Many of us are creative in small ways - in ways we find solutions to problems of everyday life. Only a few are highly creative and leave their mark on the world.

What does it take to be creative?

Creative individuals tend to possess some qualities or traits that may contribute to or are associated with their original thinking:

• Excellence: creative people are usually masters in their particular domains.
• Interests: they tend to be interested and curious about many things outside their main subject. This probably enables them to combine ideas or techniques from other disciplines in unusual ways to come up with novel, workable solutions to problems.
• Exploratory: They tend to be open to new experiences, ideas and ways of doing things.
• Motivation: most creative individuals are passionate about their interests and internally motivated.

Creativity is not about sitting and waiting for a sudden flash of insight or inspiration. This insight usually comes after much time spent in gaining knowledge and working hard at the task on hand. Discipline and perseverance are an essential part of the creative process.

As Edison famously said

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

High intelligence does not equate with creativity, however, creative people tend to have an above average IQ.

Can creativity be taught?

The generally accepted view is that creativity is not a set of skills which can be taught or learnt. However, certain habits, tools or strategies can be taught, and an environment that encourages and fosters creativity can be provided in our homes, schools and workplaces.

• Building basic skills and domain-specific knowledge
• Stimulating and rewarding curiosity and exploration
• Encouraging internal motivation, mastery and self-competition
• Providing opportunities and resources
• Promoting a willingness to take risks

Creativity and mental health

Those in creative, artistic professions tend to have a higher than average correlation with mental illnesses including schizophrenia, bipolar illness, substance abuse and suicide risk. 

Conversely, creative activities such as music, dance, art, journaling and poetry writing have been known to promote psychological well-being.

Does treatment of mental illness reduce creativity?

Treatment of mental illness could both help or hurt creativity. When treatment reduces fearfulness and avoidance it helps creativity. When it reduces motivation and flexibility it can hurt creativity. In practice there is usually a delicate balance that needs to be monitored. Some treatments are more effective at preserving creativity than others. Treatment that preserves goal-driven motivation helps all people, not only those in the arts field. As with most other aspect of health, physical exercise and adequate sleep help creativity.

Creativity is not all good nor all beneficial to society. A quick survey of the daily newspaper is enough to demonstrate how people resort to extremely creative ways to cheat, defraud or harm others.

References

1. Flaherty AW. Brain illness and creativity: mechanisms and treatment risks. Can J Psychiatry. 2011;56(3):132–143. doi:10.1177/070674371105600303
2. MacCabe JH, Sariaslan A, Almqvist C, Lichtenstein P, Larsson H, Kyaga S. Artistic creativity and risk for schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and unipolar depression: a Swedish population-based case-control study and sib-pair analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2018;212(6):370–376. doi:10.1192/bjp.2018.23

Humanity and Psychiatry | Prehistory to Pinel

Prehistoric human skull with trepanations (Monte Albán, Mexico)

Six to seven millenia ago in the Neolithic age it was understood that abnormal behaviours originated in the brain. However, the cause was ascribed to 'confined demons' and holes were drilled in the skull (trepanation) to let them out (Faria 2015). Later, the ancient Greeks and Egyptians developed an illness model of abnormal moods and behaviours, though they believed it was the heart and not the brain that controlled them. Texts that survive indicate formal psychiatric history taking and evaluation, prescription physical therapies like sleep, fever, and music alongside what would fit in with present day supportive and lifestyle and stress management therapies (Lambrini K, 2018). This care was confined to religious temple complexes some of which specialised in treatment of mental health disorders.

The 1st Millennium

Organised medical care in hospitals originated in the near and middle eastern regions. They were the first purely medical centres that developed outside of religious influence. Mental illness was also treated at these centers. The peak of this phase was in the academic medical centre (bimaristan) at Jundi-Shapur, Iran in the 6th century (Miller, 2006). Evidence based medicine may owe its first tentative roots to this centre. The crusaders, most notably the knights of St John brought back this model of aid to the ill and wounded on their return to Europe. Their legacy persists in the St John's Ambulance Brigade. 'Asylums for the Fearful' were maintained by Jain ascetic scholars during the medieval Chola period (848-1279) in Tamil Nadu, India as evidenced by stone inscriptions from that time.

In the 'Dark Ages' 

The 'dark' ages are considered as symbolizing everything malign about mental health treatments. However, medieval authors were mostly aware that diet, alcohol, overwork, and grief contributed to mental illness. The association with sin and punishment was probably propaganda that was used in a minority of cases (Kroll J, Bachrach B 1984). In 1487 Heinrich Kramer published the Malleus Malleficarum that became a paradigm for the treatment of  'witchcraft' and by extension of social and mental deviations from the norm of the time. The invention of the printing press and religious turmoil that occurred at the same time may have served to preserve what may otherwise have been an obscure book. Treatment of the 'insane' then became confined to asylums typified by the descent of Bethlehem Hospital into Bedlam by the early 15th century. In June 1816 Thomas Monro, Principal Physician, resigned as a result of scandal when he was accused of 'wanting in humanity' towards his patients.

Pinel in the age of reason

Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) initiated humanitarian reforms in the treatment of the mentally ill at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital for women in Paris. He observed a strict nonviolent management of mental patients that came to be called moral treatment. He was dramatised in portraits as liberating the insane from their chains. His psychological approach was well thought out, behavioural, and tailored to the individual rather than the diagnosis. He assembled detailed case histories and a natural history of the progress of his cases. Pinel is seen as the physician who established the field that would come to be called psychiatry.

The empirical age

We are now in the age of evidence based medicine. Fortunately there is a mountain of evidence to support a humane, individualised approach to treatment of mental health disorders (Knoll 2013). The benefits of a pollution-free environment, nurturing homes, and safe schools and workplaces has a positive impact on mental health. Individual factors like regular exercise, moderation in diet, adequate rest, and recreation are still shown to improve mental health outcomes. Physical treatments and humanity still go hand in hand for the management of mental illness.

References:

1. Faria MA. Violence, mental illness, and the brain - A brief history of psychosurgery: Part 1 - From trephination to lobotomy. Surg Neurol Int. 2013 Apr 5;4:49. doi: 10.4103/2152-7806.110146. Print 2013. Accessed 03-Aug-2019
2. Lambrini K et al. Care for Patients with Mental Illness inAncient Greece. Top 10 Contributions on Nursing & Health Care: 2nd Edition. Chapter 1. 2018. Accessed 03-Aug-2019
3. Miller A. Jundi-Shapur, bimaristans, and the rise of academic medical centres. 2006. Accessed 20-Aug-2019
4. Kroll JBachrach Bhttps://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6387755 1984. Accessed 13-Sep-2019
5. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bethlem_Royal_Hospital . Accessed 02-Oct-2019
6. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Pinel . Accessed 08-Oct-2019
7. Knoll JL. The Humanities and Psychiatry: The Rebirth of Mind. 2013-03-05. Accessed 2019-10-19
8. Somasundaram O, Raghavan V. Asylum for the fearful: A Jain innovation of the early Tamil land. Indian J Psychiatry [serial online] 2020 [cited 2020 Feb 3];62:107-8.