[Claudia Gary]

Thank you for posting this, Janice.

Down toward the very end of the article are a few items that have nothing at all to do with mental illness, and I found those especially interesting.

One is persistence in the face of rejection.

Another has to do with being autodidactic, or at least having one's own style of learning.

And then there's this:

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"Many creative people are polymaths, as historic geniuses including Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci were. George Lucas was awarded not only the National Medal of Arts in 2012 but also the National Medal of Technology in 2004. Lucas’s interests include anthropology, history, sociology, neuroscience, digital technology, architecture, and interior design....
"...The arts and the sciences are seen as separate tracks, and students are encouraged to specialize in one or the other. If we wish to nurture creative students, this may be a serious error."
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I guess the mental illness angle is more likely to sell magazines or web ads! Perhaps the author was obliged to bury the above positive comments for that reason. But I think the items above are worthy of much more attention. Maybe they should be the real focus, in fact. After all, even if a creative individual were mentally ill, it would be that person's strengths -- such as resilience, persistence, independent thinking, and "polymath" qualities -- that would enable him or her to emerge into a creatively productive life, rather than merely an ill life.