Relationship between creativity and schizophrenia: a study of patients with psychiatric disorders

Abstract

Objective: Creativity is the ability to generate original ideas, solutions and new concepts. This includes divergent thinking, defined as the ability to think outside of established patterns. Research has focused on the link between creativity and schizophrenia, but results are heterogeneous and contradictory. This study examined divergent thinking using the Divergent Thinking Test (DTT), which compared healthy subjects and subjects with a psychiatric disorder, including schizophrenia.

Methods: 48 Patients (schizophrenia, n = 20, psychiatric disorder other than schizophrenia, n = 28) and 38 healthy subjects performed the DTT, which includes five factor scores: fluidity (FL), flexibility (FS), originality (O), elaboration (E), title (T). Linear models were employed for between-group comparisons.

Results: The results indicated that psychiatric patients show a lower performance on the DTT than healthy subjects. Within the patient group, subjects with schizophrenia show greater difficulties than subjects with other psychiatric disorders.

Conclusions: The DTT scores of the control group are higher than those of the psychiatric group. Regarding to the type of diagnosis, performance on the DTT task is lower in schizophrenic patients than in patients with another psychiatric disorder, suggesting the existence of a negative association between creativity and schizophrenia.

Keywords: Schizophrenia; creativity; divergent thinking; psychiatric disorders.