Everyone I Know is Brokenhearted

I'm currently reading Touched with Fire by Kay Jamison. It's a fairly quantitative examination of the links between depression and creativity. Though it's specifically about manic-depressives, I think much of it is relevant to the article as the author describes himself as a writer, web designer/developer, musician and artist.

I was shocked even paging through the book when I first got it, jumping from chart to chart. Check these three out:

Showing Van Gogh's seasonal depression: http://xomf.com/rzbwz

Suicide rates of artists and writers: http://xomf.com/xysmn

Mood disorders in writers and artists: http://xomf.com/mxnqq

I think it would be easy for someone to say "oh but wait - this guy is a web designer, he's not sitting with oils and a canvas - these stats are irrelevant." They'd be wrong. Here is what Steve thought about the people who worked on the mac:

"These are the people under different circumstances would be painters and poets but because of the time that we live in this new medium has appeared in which to express one's self to one's fellow species and that's the medium of computing. And so a lot of people that would have been artists and scientists have gone into this field to express their feeling..."

(from the 1990 interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nMD6sjAe8I#t=16m25s)

I think there's probably more depression in our industry than people let on. TechCrunch recently did a post on depression in founders. Hell - I just commented on a HN thread of a guy working on an app to combat loneliness. It's a real problem, with a real nasty stigma, and I think it's important people start talking openly about it.

"Hell, a major motion picture company put out Fight Club, which is about as unsubtle an attack on consumer corporate capitalism as you can get."

And that major motion picture company made a shit ton of money selling that fantasy. We're drinking what they're selling.