The Creative Advantages of Schizophrenia

The Creative Advantages of Schizophrenia
Author: Paul Kiritsis
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2020-02
Genre:
ISBN: 9781527543447

The aphorism that madness and creative genius are opposing sides of the same coin predates contemporary psychiatry and has existed since the time of the great Stagirite Aristotle. Schizophrenia is one mental disorder intimately linked with creative thinking and achievement. There is no shortage of eminent scientists, thinkers, writers, artists, composers, and political activists tentatively theorized to have precariously balanced the great divide between the demons of schizophrenia and the muses of creative illumination, including Rene Descartes, Emanuel Swedenborg, John Forbes Nash, Leonardo da Vinci, and Joan of Arc, to name but a few. However, is that association veracious in an empirical sense? If it is, how exactly are schizophrenia and creative illumination related? Using new empirical findings, this book sheds new light upon the age-old assumption and goes further still in explaining how creative potential with world-fashioning powers can be channelled in individuals with this diagnosis. Mental health practitioners will find this book both intriguing and useful.

The Creative Advantages of Schizophrenia

The Creative Advantages of Schizophrenia
Author: Paul Kiritsis
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2019-04-15
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1527533182

The aphorism that madness and creative genius are opposing sides of the same coin predates contemporary psychiatry and has existed since the time of the great Stagirite Aristotle. Schizophrenia is one mental disorder intimately linked with creative thinking and achievement. There is no shortage of eminent scientists, thinkers, writers, artists, composers, and political activists tentatively theorized to have precariously balanced the great divide between the demons of schizophrenia and the muses of creative illumination, including Rene Descartes, Emanuel Swedenborg, John Forbes Nash, Leonardo da Vinci, and Joan of Arc, to name but a few. However, is that association veracious in an empirical sense? If it is, how exactly are schizophrenia and creative illumination related? Using new empirical findings, this book sheds new light upon the age-old assumption and goes further still in explaining how creative potential with world-fashioning powers can be channelled in individuals with this diagnosis. Mental health practitioners will find this book both intriguing and useful.

The Descent of Madness

The Descent of Madness
Author: Jonathan Burns
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2007-03-12
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1135449074

Drawing on evidence from across the behavioural and natural sciences, this book advances a radical new hypothesis: that madness exists as a costly consequence of the evolution of a sophisticated social brain in Homo sapiens. Having explained the rationale for an evolutionary approach to psychosis, the author makes a case for psychotic illness in our living ape relatives, as well as in human ancestors. He then reviews existing evolutionary theories of psychosis, before introducing his own thesis: that the same genes causing madness are responsible for the evolution of our highly social brain. Jonathan Burns’ novel Darwinian analysis of the importance of psychosis for human survival provides some meaning for this form of suffering. It also spurs us to a renewed commitment to changing our societies in a way that allows the mentally ill the opportunity of living. The Descent of Madness will be of interest to those in the fields of psychiatry, psychology, sociology and anthropology, and is also accessible to the general reader.

What Is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-Being

What Is the Evidence on the Role of the Arts in Improving Health and Well-Being
Author: Daisy Fancourt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 142
Release: 2019-06
Genre:
ISBN: 9789289054553

Over the past two decades, there has been a major increase in research into the effects of the arts on health and well-being, alongside developments in practice and policy activities in different countries across the WHO European Region and further afield. This report synthesizes the global evidence on the role of the arts in improving health and well-being, with a specific focus on the WHO European Region. Results from over 3000 studies identified a major role for the arts in the prevention of ill health, promotion of health, and management and treatment of illness across the lifespan. The reviewed evidence included study designs such as uncontrolled pilot studies, case studies, small-scale cross-sectional surveys, nationally representative longitudinal cohort studies, community-wide ethnographies and randomized controlled trials from diverse disciplines. The beneficial impact of the arts could be furthered through acknowledging and acting on the growing evidence base; promoting arts engagement at the individual, local and national levels; and supporting cross-sectoral collaboration.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia
Author: Steven M. Silverstein
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 403
Release: 2013-11-15
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0262019620

Leading researchers address conceptual and technical issues in schizophrenia and suggest novel strategies for advancing research and treatment. Despite major advances in methodology and thousands of published studies every year, treatment outcomes in schizophrenia have not improved over the last fifty years. Moreover, we still lack strategies for prevention and we do not yet understand how the interaction of genetic, developmental, and environmental factors contribute to the disorder. In this book, leading researchers consider conceptual and technical obstacles to progress in understanding schizophrenia and suggest novel strategies for advancing research and treatment. The contributors address a wide range of critical issues: the construct of schizophrenia itself; etiology, risk, prediction, and prevention; different methods of modeling the disorder; and treatment development and delivery. They identify crucial gaps in our knowledge and offer creative but feasible suggestions. These strategies include viewing schizophrenia as a heterogeneous group of conditions; adopting specific new approaches to prediction and early intervention; developing better integration of data across genetics, imaging, perception, cognition, phenomenology, and other fields; and moving toward an evidence-based, personalized approach to treatment requiring rational clinical decision-making to reduce functional disability. Contributors Robert Bittner, Robert W. Buchanan, Kristin S. Cadenhead, William T. Carpenter, Jr., Aiden Corvin, Daniel Durstewitz, André A. Fenton, Camilo de la Fuente-Sandoval, Jay A. Gingrich, Joshua A. Gordon, Chloe Gott, Peter B. Jones, René S. Kahn, Richard Keefe, Wolfgang Kelsch, James L. Kennedy, Matcheri S. Keshavan, Angus W. MacDonald III, Anil K. Malhotra, John McGrath, Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, Kevin J. Mitchell, Bita Moghaddam, Vera A. Morgan, Craig Morgan, Kim T. Mueser, Karoly Nikolich, Patricio O'Donnell, Michael O'Donovan, William A. Phillips, Wulf Rössler, Louis Sass, Akira Sawa, Jeremy K. Seamans, Steven M. Silverstein, William Spaulding, Sharmili Sritharan, Heike Tost, Peter Uhlhaas, Aristotle Voineskos, Michèle Wessa, Leanne M. Williams, Ashley Wilson, Til Wykes

Creativity and Mental Illness

Creativity and Mental Illness
Author: S. Kyaga
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 171
Release: 2014-11-27
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1137345810

Is there really a thin line between madness and genius? This book provides a thorough review of the current state of knowledge on this age old idea, and presents new empirical research to put an end to this debate, but also to open up discussion about the implications of its findings.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia
Author: Eckhart R. Straube
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 357
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 3642743080

Schizophrenia remains the most complex, puzzling, and because of its tendency towards chronicity, the most severe of the mental disorders. It is a very heterogeneous disorder characterized by extreme disruptions of thought, per ception, behavior, and emotion. About I % of the population worldwide will experience at least one schizophrenic episode. Most of the patients will have a number of exacerbations leading in about 30% of cases to a chronic residual state, due either to the illness itself or to psychosocial environmental factors, or-most likely-to the interaction of both. Given the enormous personal hardship for patients and their relatives as well as the staggering costs of the illness for our societies, research in schizo phrenia has become the number one priority in many countries, especially in the United States. However, research on the etiology of schizophrenia has failed to establish a single causal factor, and it is nowadays accepted to be multifactorial. A combjnation of biological predisposition and enviromnental circumstances is assumed to be necessary for the manifestation of the illness. This shift in orientation away from an either/or (biological or environmental, e.g., family interaction) point of view, as evident in the work of the 1950s and 1960s, was certainly desirable to encourage research.

Recovery from Schizophrenia

Recovery from Schizophrenia
Author: Richard Warner
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2004
Genre: Deinstitutionalization
ISBN: 0415212677

'Recovery from Schizophrenia' demonstrates convincingly, but controversially, how political, economic and labour market forces shape social responses to the mentally ill, mould psychiatric treatment philosophy, and influence the onset and course of one of the most common forms of mental illness.

Cognitive Impairment in Schizophrenia

Cognitive Impairment in Schizophrenia
Author: Philip D. Harvey
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2013-01-24
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1107013208

Provides state-of-the-art information about cognition in schizophrenia with a wide ranging focus on measuring and treating cognitive deficits.