Effects Of Depression On Our Creative Minds

Depression 's Effect on Our Creative Minds

All around the world, creative people use all sorts of different types of influences to produce their many types of works. Between cultural/media pressure to family matters, inventive minds apply these life experiences into their crafts. Among some of these minds, depression looms over in an attempt to cloud their creative form. But could depression possibly aide in boosting our creativeness? Could it have other positive effects on our creative minds? Depression places quite a lot of stress and other negative feelings on the backs of its hosts. Shelley H Carson gives a good point in her psychology article “Depression, Creativity, and a New Pair of Shoes”, where she says that “… most poets, artists and

In 2009, Forgas organized a small experiment in a stationary store in Sydney Australia. He placed various miniature items on the counter by the checkout area. He waited by the door where the shoppers exited to question them about how many items they could recall at the time. On sunny days, he altered the music to be bright and bubbly, using the soundtrack of Gilbert and Sullivan. On rainy days, he adapted the tune to a much more down and out melody with Verdi’s Requiem. In his results he found that when surveying the shoppers in a more depressed setting, they were almost four times as likely to remember much more of the trinkets than on the opposite setting. He concluded that a major finding of his was that “… sadness makes us more focused and diligent – the spotlight of attention is sharpened – happiness seems to have the opposite effect, so that good moods make us 20 percent more likely to have a moment of insight.”[7] These results were astounding as they helped prove the fact that melancholy moods actually boost our state of mind into assisting our creativity