Swedish twin study links artistic creativity and mental health through shared genetics

A study published in Molecular Psychiatry examined creativity and mental health in 14,658 Swedish twins, including a genotyped subsample. Researchers combined longitudinal analyses, co-twin comparisons, polygenic scores and genetic correlations. Creativity measures covered artistic and scientific achievement, occupation, openness and divergent thinking; mental health assessments included self-reported symptoms and registry-based diagnoses. Survey data were collected in 2012–2013 and 2022–2023.

Higher artistic achievement and openness were associated with worse mental health, including psychosis proneness, major depressive disorder and anxiety disorder. Scientific creativity measures showed predominantly non-significant or inverse associations with mental health problems, particularly for occupational creativity. Co-twin and genetic analyses suggested that shared genetic influences contributed importantly to the observed associations. An association between depressive symptoms and openness persisted in the longitudinal co-twin model, which the authors interpreted as potentially causal.

The findings suggest that creativity should not be treated as a single, uniform correlate of psychiatric illness. However, this observational study does not establish that artistic creativity causes mental disorders or that creative activities are harmful. The supplied text provides no effect sizes or confidence intervals, limiting assessment of clinical magnitude, and does not evaluate arts-based treatment.