It’s an idea from the ancients. The philosopher Aristotle famously opined that genius and madness go hand in hand. Psychiatric studies have to some degree supported the adage. Studies of more than 1 million Swedish people in 2011 and 2013 found that people who had close relatives with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder were much more likely to become creative professionals. (The patients with mental illness were not themselves more creative, with the exception of some who had bipolar disorder.)

Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote this article for NPR, to read more.