mental illness and Intelligence

mella wrote:I was just wondering if there is a connection between high intelligence and mental illness, depression in particular.

The reason i ask is because i know of a number of people who suffer from depression who are extreemly intelligent people.

Do they have higher up times too...that is...do they have moments where they are radiant and full of life, happy and energetic? I wonder if there is a wave to be found in their states, like a stock market graph or something? Happy being up on the graph and depression being down on it, do their states bob and weave and swing back and forth?

It seems like that to me, judging from this forum, everyone talks with a well developed vocabulary and grammar. How did that one saying go? Was it "Genius and madness are two sides to the same coin." or it's something close to that.

Indeed, a therapist told me that highly intelligent people suffer more often from depression than average people.

If I may add something to this statement; she didn't tell me whether or not the fact that compared to average people, a higher share of highly intelligent people who suffer from depression are actually diagnosed has been taken account (i.e. the self-selection problem).

What is with society's obsession with intelligence and IQ! Live, love, and be happy. Don't worry about how smart you are.

jb_2008 wrote:What is with society's obsession with intelligence and IQ! Live, love, and be happy. Don't worry about how smart you are.

I completely agree that living, loving and being happy is much more important than intelligence. However, we do live in a society where one is judged by their intelligence therefore I feel that there are many people whom feel insecure over their intellect because of this very reason.

Let's not get off track by talking about societies obsession with intelligence.

I asked this origional question as i wondered if any research had been done regarding intelligence and the prevalance of mental illness. From what i've observed. It seems to me that the more intelligent a person, the more pre disposed they seem to be to becoming depressed and/ or developing some form of mental illness at some point in their life.


I wondered that if intelligence was found to be a pre-cursor to the possibillity of mental health problems developing - in the same way as say. a history of cancer in a family can be seen to be a pre-cursor to a person developing this condition - Then maybe stratergies could be adopted to monitor and limit the effects of a mental illness or even stop it developing alltogether. In the same way as stratergies are adopted to monitor, limit and /or stop cancer.

It was just a thought.

lp_ultra,

I appreciate where you are coming from with that. You make a good point. However, I

believe that 95% of the judgement comes from within. The perceived judgement is internalized

and magnified 100X. This probably begins in childhood.

Sylvia plath was bipolar, Van gogh had was a manic depressive.
so is francis ford coppola and mussulini.
i think there is a connection, but i don't think there have been any studies on it. I always thought that people with major depression issues had them because of the wisdom they had about themselves, and the way the world worked. more so than typical people.

I believe that depression can be caused by a more intelligent person's higher awareness of the problems that they are facing.

However, I believe depression is a natural, healthy phenomenon that we all go through when forced/choosing to take on a new role- the most obvious example of this is post-partum.

Personally, I have an IQ of 149- don't know how accurate that is, but I know that when actually tested as a child I had an IQ of around 150- and I have suffered from depression in the past.

However, when I was forcibly institutionalized and then diagnosed with major depression, I didn't agree with the diagnosis at all. I was perfectly hapy, having fun with life, and working hard- but that all somehow got twisted around on me, and judging by the way I acted in the hospital, i was diagnosed with major depression, despite scoring a 90 out of 100 on the functioning metric.

I was later diagnosed with schizophrenia. After the diagnosis, despite being on the pills, which are essentially serotonin/dopamine repressants, I scored a 42 on the wonderlic.

I think depression in its clinical form is really the inabilty to let go, and that may affect smarter people at times because they feel like being smarter gives them the right to control everything.

just my 2 cents.

oh, and one more thing: it is harder to fool a clinically depressed person than a "normal" person(based on studies). so maybe clinical depression, in the eyes of the world, somehow equates to intelligence- which a lot of people find threatening.

Chris

i'd als like to add that i don't think intelligence, in even the narrowest sense, is as genetic as a lot of people like to think it is. I may have scored highly as a child, but i know a lot of that had to do with growing up with intelligent, very well-educated parents who read to me the likes of greek mythology, etc.

intelligence, in my view, is having a good mental framework and the ability to realize that you are not omnipotent, but that if you play to your strenghts, you can do anything.

or maybe I'm wrong? maybe "intelligent" people are less flexible, and so get depressed any time everything isn't perfect, which happens pretty often.

sometimes we human often take the exceptionally smarter's behavior as foolish actions

jb_2008 wrote:What is with society's obsession with intelligence and IQ! Live, love, and be happy. Don't worry about how smart you are.

That is very important for life but in my case I like discovering new things, I like attaining new knowledge. But had I known it might be the start to some mental illnesses I might have not been so enthusiastic about learning lol.

I believe that Mental Disorders and intelligence do have a very deep connection. I am quite an intelligent person, but with a different kind of intelligence. i am strong in all nine intelligence types, and I have a variety of mental disorders. But I am So thoughtful that I conspire ways to help me realize it is just part of my mind that is controlling me.

By the way, me bragging so much about myself comes from me being Narcissistic:: Which means people with this disorder believe they are superior to others; demands constant praise and affection. And always wants to be recognized as superior, and often result to anger when someone goes against something the patient said.

Kindve simple, just research.

But back to my point, I strongly believe they serve some kind of connection. Though only someone of that level of intelligence could understand it in that way because it is mostly based on individuality...

LOL...thanks for sharing the narcissism bit...it is evidently something you are proud of??? Myself, I can be rather arrogant at times...but don't want praise because when I am arrogant...that means I do want people to go against me. When I'm not arrogant...I really don't want any confrontation. It doesn't really bother me if someone were to disagree with me...there may be times when I'm not in the mood for it and could get annoyed but that goes for the general population I guess.

As far as intelligence being related to mental illness...what a crock in my opinion. You can be extremely happy and be extremely intelligent at the same time without having any kind of illness. It is just that people who apparently have no type of mental illness...which is rare this day and age because if everyone does not fall under the specifications of whoever considers what being normal is then you are said to have one type of mental illness or another...seem to be more balanced EI and IQ wise...so they have a tendency to focus on both...where as people with mental illness have disruptions or issues with EI and tend to focus particularly on IQ in compensation for what they lack in EI. With that said...you could take it as mental illness being the cause of a higher IQ...but in my opinion it is not the illness itself but rather the individual's ability to develop intelligence in ways to find security within something. What do you think, Fool?...does your narcissism want to put its hands around my neck? LMAO Yes, I'm only kidding you...don't ever take what I say seriously.