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posted by LaminatorX on Sunday April 06 2014, @05:28PM   Printer-friendly
from the It-brings-on-many-changes. dept.

Shiela M. Elred writes at Discovery News that it's clear that some artistic professions are more at risk of suicide including writers, actors and painters. The suicide rate of musicians is about three times the national average, according to work by Steve Stack, director of the Center for Suicide Research and a professor at Wayne State University, whose research on occupation and suicide is the most comprehensive to date, covering a period of eight years of death certificates that list occupation. Kurt Cobain's case seems to be a classic representation of struggles that disproportionately affect artists and in Cobain's case were several red flags that Nirvana's lead singer was suicidal: a family history of suicide, bipolar disorder and drug addiction. In Cobain's case 5000 fans listened to a tape recording of Courtney Love reading the suicide note, and calling Kurt various foul names for killing himself. There has been speculation that Love's negative and angry reaction to her husband's death may have prevented copycat suicides among his fans. "There's definitely a known connection between creativity and mental illness," says Dr. Christine Moutier adding that over 90 percent of people who commit suicide had a mental illness, whether it be active or under-treated or undiagnosed.

According to Moutier many artists and people who commit suicide share character traits such as perfectionism. Common pathways in the brain lead people to both be more creative and experience mood and behavior patterns outside the norm. And real life for artists can be especially challenging says Steve Stack, director of the Center for Suicide Research. "As an occupational group, artists are more likely than others to experience labor market strains. These strains include unemployment, underemployment, client dependency (in a quest after gigs/contracts), multiple job holding and low incomes. Some work at menial jobs by day and do art at night." Combined with the higher rates of mental disorders such as manic depression and bipolar disorders, lives of artists are often volatile. "It's not to say you should squelch creativity" says Moutier, "but I do think family support of young adults excited about artistic endeavors is important."

 
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Aighearach on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:00PM

    by Aighearach (2621) on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:00PM (#27164)

    Agree 100%, and I just wanted to add... the comments on non-tech subjects are really lame and not insightful. Nerds don't have any special cultural insight into music and art, or a general interest in those things.(as a group)

    The quality of insight is the same as if you went to a music site for comments about tech. Really painfully stupid.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Tork on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:51PM

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday April 06 2014, @09:51PM (#27183)

    Nerds don't have any special cultural insight into music and art, or a general interest in those things.

    That is utter bullshit and if you had ever spent any time on Slashdot around the early 2000's you'd know it. In fact you just made the case for maintaining some diversity on this site. The best comments are the ones where we learn about something we had never heard about before.

    I have personally known 3 senior IT people, in different cities mind you, who had their own band and played after work. Yeah, it actually is interesting to talk about. It turns out that the definition of nerd doesn't actually contain the word 'technology'. It also turns out that many of the things that happen in the creative world also happen in the technical world. The more you know, right?

    Meanwhile, there are plenty of boring tech stories that fly by here, too. I just scroll past them. No, I don't want to talk about Linus banning some guy from working on the Linux kernel or whatever, but I also don't think this site would thrive on just my interests alone.

    Before you hit reply and tell me how wrong I am, do us and the site a favor and consider this: Not long ago Slashdot was running four stories a day about Apple, most of them involving Android in some way. Slashdot became the home of the great Smartphone Operating System Flame War. Those threads generated much higher volumes of comments and surely Slashdot earned quite a bit of ad-revenue from it. Their focus on that topic was so great that the other non-Apple stories turned into discussions about Apple anyway. (Fun little detail: random users with mod-points modded up their allies in the war, so it's not like the off-topicness was well enforced.) Today we're discussing it on a site that broke off from Slashdot, one of the reasons being 'GroupThink'. Consider the value of a little diversity on a site like this. No, we don't need to go to the extremes of reviewing Bieber's next album. And, no, this story isn't taking you down that path.

    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Monday April 07 2014, @02:35AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Monday April 07 2014, @02:35AM (#27264)

      Wish I had mod points right now.
      When I specifically want tech information I go to a site specializing in that particular sort of tech. I went to Slashdot and I come here now because I want to read discussions by tech oriented people about various issues, mostly tech oriented issues but sometimes not. Regardless of the subject, usually the discussion here is of a higher level of intelligence and thoughtfulness than you will get on any political or other news oriented site. Sometimes a bit heated yes, but posters here usually have some understanding of the true idea of an argument. Occasionally, someone genuinely knowledgeable about a subject posts something and we all learn something new.

      ...for I have taken all knowledge to be my province... and all that.