Mental Illness vs Intelligence

Is there a relationship between insanity and intelligence? Of course, you must have a mind before you can lose it. However, to what extent this is true, the topic is too good for me to pass up. Insanity is a legal term and in court rooms it means the person not know the difference between right and wrong. That may or may not be so. It will be up to the judge and the jury to decide that. While it is true there is a fine line between the two, the line is not one necessarily flimsy and easily crossed by the other. A truly intelligent person will have the necessary mental equipment to deal with the aberrations that a person bordering on insanity will not have.

But mental illness can be a chronic condition and an intelligent person who can learn about his disease and how to cope so that his life is less threatened by this disease. Or Mental illness can be a disease that strikes periodically,  in between these bouts the person afflicted is relatively normal.

Again, education and a desire to help oneself play a good part in how one so afflicted copes. Mental illness, it is true, can disable a intelligent and able minds as well as it can one with a lower mentality, but of the two, it stands to reason that the more intelligence a person has the more able he will be able to straighten out his mental kinks.

On the other hand if this argument is about whether those afflicted with mental illness are more intelligent; or intelligent people are more prone to mental illness. I say hogwash. Mental illness takes its toll on the productivity of the individual whether its victims are of high or low intelligence. Mental illness is no respecter of mental capacity. Those with higher intelligence may worry over it, deny it, and in general compound its problems, however.

It is debilitating to say the least. But there is one misconception that should be cleared up, that of the people dealing with minds and what makes them work is somewhat warped and is not quite normal. That's not so. It is their peculiar inheritances and their special abilities and their daring in bringing these 'strange' thoughts out in the open, that leave them open for criticism.

It is true that high achievers often are diagnosed with bi-polar illness where the pendulum swings from euphoria to depression. But these individual achieved in spite of their illness, not because of it. Just think how much more they could have achieved had they not have had to contend with this affliction? When they go through the ill cycles of their lives their work suffers is inferior to that produced when they are lucid and are relatively free of illness.

What people don't understand about mental illness is that is not a thing apart. The mind goes along with the rest the body, and the soul. All influence the other. With better mental health physical health with benefit and with better physical health mental health will be on upswing, and the soul, well, the whole body benefits when it is in good condition. Mental health is on the upswing when all three work harmoniously together. 

(This is a recycled article I published to Helium.com a few years ago. It has been edited for grammatical errors, only.)