On the positives of mental health “disorders”.

In this short (and scrappily written) article I would like to challenge the way our modern society thinks about mental health disorders. These are the two things I would like to claim:

1. Mental health “disorders” are not actually diseases. A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not due to any immediate external injury. Neither are they “disorders”. That is because most of the so called disorders are actually seen in some form in most human beings. Even the severe cases are pretty common and affects up to 2–4% of the population.
2. Mental health “disorders” are not always bad. A significant number of mental health conditions have their pros and cons. This is the most common myth about mental health problems that I would like to bust. A lot of different mental health problems actually have evolutionary advantages.

In general a lot of different academic studies have been done on these topics and these are some of the conclusions:

1. There seems to be a high correlation between autism/autistic tendencies and focused problem solving and IQ. This is a conclusive paper of the genetic correlation between autism and IQ. This paper talks about autism as a disorder of high intelligence. And finally we should all be aware of the Savant syndrome. A lot (> 50%) of Savants are autistic.
2. There seems to be a strong correlation between ADD/ADHD and creativity, combined with the ability to take risks and the ability to persevere. This is more of a qualitative paper on the topic. There are several anecdotal evidence of really famous creative geniuses like Newton, Da Vinci and Einstein having ADD/ADHD.
3. There are anecdotal evidences of bipolar disorder being the “genius” disease. I read somewhere that the word genius actually comes from “being possessed by a genie” because people in older times thought that some people who produce exceptional results often seemed to have been possessed by a spirit (similar behavior as someone in a hypo-manic state in bipolar people would show). This paper talks about link between bipolar spectrum and genius while this paper talks about bipolar and leadership qualities.
4. There seems to be a correlation between depression and creativity. Check out this article.

My hypothesis (which is heavily generalized and might not be completely and scientifically accurate — but I believe falls in a decent ball park of the actual reality) is that a lot of mental health problems actually had evolutionary advantages in our early hunter gatherer society. As we moved away from hunter gatherer societies to more civilized societies, these traits stopped being advantageous because the socio-economic conditions were not as chaotic anymore.

That being said, in chaotic environments people with such “problems” do end up being successful and you also need such traits in people who are at the top of the social ladder because they might often need to take decisions in chaotic environments. Anecdotally, it seems people in the very top and the very bottom end of our socio-economic spectrum are the people who tend to exhibit such behaviors, and I am not sure what to make of that.