Poets on Prozac: Mental Illness, Treatment, and the Creative Process

摘要

The editor, also a poet, in his introduction briefly explores the topic of the prevalence of mental illness in poets, noting both the medical and popular conceptions. Other conditions were anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), bipolar disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anorexia, schizophrenia, and substance abuse. In almost all the accounts presented here, mental illness and emotional distress were not prerequisites for the creativity of these poets, but, in some cases, they did seem to play a role.