Dana Press Blog: Vonneguit, Creativity and Depression

Edgar Allan Poe’s melancholic colors are seen in many other writers. An example is Kurt Vonnegut Jr., writer of Slaughterhouse-Five, who died on April 11, 2007.

On the Dana Press Blog, Nicky Penttila posts an interview with Nancy C. Andreasen, a long-time friend of Vonnegut. “He matched the pattern of having significant mood disorder,” said Andreasen, a neuroscientist.

Vonnegut suffered with depression throughout his life and attempted suicide in 1984. “I would say the general pattern, for him and for most creative people, is they are not very productive when they’re depressed,” said Andreasen. “They do most of their creating after they’ve emerged from feeling depressed.”

Poe described his wrestling with depression in his letters. Similarly, Vonnegut expressed his melancholy in his writing. “But, in a sense, he overcame the sadness, to write,” Andreasen said.

By writing about the ebbs and flows of depression and mania, writers increase knowledge to recognize these forces in us or others. Awareness is part of the cure.

An Unquiet Mind

Poe’s well-known, harsh personality is typical of those who navigate the treacherous waters of the bipolar temperament. In her memoir, An Unquiet Mind, Dr. Kay Jamison describes the antagonistic temperament:

No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable. Madness, on the other hand, most certainly can, and often does, kill love through its misbehavior, and, especially, through its savage moods. The sadder, sleepier, slower, and less volatile depressions are more intuitively understood and more easily taken in stride. A quiet melancholy is neither threatening nor beyond ordinary comprehension; an angry, violent, vexatious despair is both

As a sufferer of manic-depression, Jamison’s speaks about the familiar. But do we hear? Family members hear who have seen the descent of a loved one into madness. It's like a hurricane that ravages the mind. Unless the hurricane hits close to home, it's just another news story. Courageous sufferers of mental illness, such as Jamison, educate and enlighten.

Mental illness needs to come out of the closet. As we engage in more conversations about it, we not only support creative people, such as Poe, but others as well. Those others might live next door.