Are Creativity and Sadness Linked?

Wake Forest University professor Eric G. Wilson, worries that while serious depression is a problem worthy of treatment, "mild to moderate sadness," or melancholia, is too often responded to with medication [source: NPR]. Wilson thinks that embracing some sadness can boost creative thinking and allow for more complex relationships with the rest of the world.

Striving solely for happiness is, in Wilson's view, to ignore a fundamental aspect of the human condition. He also points to the great history of artists, dreamers, thinkers and innovators who derived inspiration from being melancholy. Melancholia then, Wilson writes, represents a more realistic middle ground between sheer bliss and depression, a place where new insights can be derived and creative thinking performed [source: NPR].

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