Mental Health, Creativity, and Wealth

Focusing on bipolar disorder (BD), we investigate the link between mental health, creativity, and
wealth. Analyzing population data for Denmark, we find that people with BD are more likely to
be musicians, but less likely to hold other creative jobs than the population. Healthy siblings of
people with BD, however, are consistently more likely to work in creative jobs. We also show
people in the top decile of parental wealth are seven times as likely to work in creative
professions compared with the bottom decile. Yet, wealth differences only explain a small
portion of the link between BD and creativity.