Medicine

Artistic creativity linked to worse mental health, scientific creativity isn’t

How the science connects

Mental healthCreativityTwin studies

AI Insight

A twin study investigated the relationship between creativity and mental health, finding that artistic creativity was associated with poorer mental health outcomes, while scientific creativity showed no such association. This research adds to a mixed body of evidence on the creativity-mental health link, with previous studies producing inconsistent results about whether creative individuals experience more mental health difficulties.


Understanding differential associations between types of creativity and mental health could inform support systems for artists and creative professionals. The findings suggest that mental health interventions may need to be tailored differently for artistic versus scientific creative fields.


The relationship between creativity and mental health has attracted the interest of many psychologists over the past decades. Some past studies have found that creativity is sometimes linked to mental health difficulties, while others collected opposing or inconsistent results.

Source: Twin study links artistic, but not scientific, creativity to poorer mental health