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Music composers and bipolar disorders: Where do we stand?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2021

V. Giannouli
V. Giannouli*
Affiliation:
Institute Of Neurobiology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria
*
*Corresponding author.

Abstract

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Introduction

The intersection between bipolar disorders and creativity has been investigated in western literature. Although psychopathology has been proposed for famous artists in painting, writing, music and other forms of art, there is no systematic study examining bipolar disorders and music production in composers.

Objectives

The aim of this review is to investigate this relationship by providing an overview of published studies.

Methods

The search included papers published in English as abstracts as well as in full length until October 2020. The literature search was conducted using the MEDLINE, EMBASE, PUBMED and GOOGLE SCHOLAR databases. For all the searches, the terms/key words that were used were “bipolar disorder”, “music”, “creativity”, and “composers”.

Results

Search results for composers from different music genres and musical periods indicated that the proposed origin of the overall bipolar pattern is attributed to several stressful environmental factors which are taking the form of interpersonal problems regarding the expressed emotion, life events, and paucity of stress-management skills. In addition to that, bipolar psychopathological patterns seem to influence the quantity of music composing activity indirectly due to changes in everyday functional abilities.

Conclusions

Published reports, although based on biographical research, do provide evidence in support of a strong bipolarity-music creativity/production link for famous composers. Further well-designed studies in living music professionals engaged in music composition are needed.

Keywords

CreativityBipolar DisordersMusic
Type
Abstract
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 64 , Special Issue S1: Abstracts of the 29th European Congress of Psychiatry , April 2021 , pp. S202
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Psychiatric Association
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