Well , they are , especially for the poets . You find that as many as 90% of these very successful poets had either depression or mania as high as 90% . That's incredible contrast that with military where it's as few as 10% or professional athletes where it's as few as 20% .
So does this mean that being a poet will make you manic or depressed ? Well , first of all , let's look at the poetry category , it turns out that 75% of these eminent poets , these highly accomplished poets had major depression , whereas only about 20% of those poets had manic episodes . Ok .
And for the professional athletes , as I mentioned before , none of them had mania . So does this mean that being a poet will make you manic or depressed ? Well , first of all , let's look at the poetry category , it turns out that 75% of these eminent poets , these highly accomplished poets had major depression , whereas only about 20% of those poets had manic episodes .
Certainly we're not saying that it's not that being a poet is gonna give you depression . But it turns out that people with depression and people with depression and mania seem to gravitate towards poetry or at least are very successful at poetry . Again , associative correlative , no causal relationship here .
So this is a study looking at mood disorders in eminent individuals . So these are people that are not just good at what they do but are exceptional at what they do and explored the percentage of people in given professions with either depression or mania . And this was actually a data set gleaned from more than 1020th century Westerners based on their biographies that were reviewed by other people .
