THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYnon-depressed people tend to overestimate how much influence they
really have over the light – a kind of illusion of control that also applies
to their feelings of control in life in general. By contrast, people with
depression are far more accurate at judging how much control they have
over the light and over life too.
There are also reports of links between depression, especially bipolar
or manic depression (characterized by extreme highs and lows of
mood) and creativity. The clinical psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison
and the psychiatrist Nancy Andreasen have both made studies of artists
and writers and found exceptionally high rates of depression among
their ranks.
Others have warned against championing the so-called “upsides” of
depression. Writing for the World of Psychology blog in 2010, the psychia-
trist Ronald Pies said that in nearly thirty years of meeting patients
with depression, he’d “almost never” encountered one who said that
their major depressive episode had had a net benefit. He challenges the
depression creativity link, arguing that most artists blame their symp-
toms for stalling their creativity. We should accept ordinary sadness and
sorrow as part of the human condition, he wrote, but the idea that severe
clinical depression can help solve life’s problems is a “destructive myth”.
Anxiety
In small doses, anxiety is a good thing. It steels the mind and body for
a challenge, whether it be a public presentation, an important game of
darts or a job interview. Even a generally anxious disposition has its
benefits – a 2006 study by William Lee at the Institute of Psychiatry
followed the fate of thousands of people born in 1946, and found that
those who were more anxious were less likely to have died of accidental
causes before the age of twenty-five.
It’s only when anxiety becomes excessive and prolonged that it
becomes a problem. Unfortunately, it seems that this is often the case,
since anxiety is the most common of all mental disorders. Nervous
excitement gives way to sustained tension and fear: the stomach keeps
turning, the heart races, the hands shake and the dread just won’t go
away.
Anxiety comes in numerous varieties. Generalized anxiety disorder
is a continuous sense of nervous apprehension about all manner of
things: loved ones, work, being late, losing weight, running out of
money – the list goes on. There are also forms of anxiety with a specific