Mental Illness in the Academy: Elyn Saks’ Brave New World

12 September 2007 at 2:34 pm dhoopes 2 comments

| David Hoopes |

Monday’s LA Times had an amazing story about a USC law professor who has managed to attend Oxford, Yale Law School, and become Dean of Research at the USC law school while battling schizophrenia. Many O&M readers have probably read the book or seen the movie, “A Beautiful Mind,” the incredible story of mathematician John Nash. Like Nash, Elyn Saks suffered hallucinations, delusions, and a litany of other terrible effects of her disease. I probably should not use the past tense because I don’t believe medicine can remove these things. However, they can be tempered. Saks recently published a memior, “The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness.” Thus, in addition to the direct suffering of the disease, Saks is now willing to take on the problems of social stigma, no small thing.

I wish I could think of some profound comment or lesson. There are many among us who suffer from a variety of mental illnesses. For better or worse, more jokes about academics come to mind than profundities. Here’s to the day when the social stigma associated with mental illness is much smaller. I’ve always thought I’d wait until I got tenure to open up any of my (much more minor) nightmares.

Entry filed under: Former Guest Bloggers, Myths and Realities, People, Recommended Reading.

Conference on Public-Private Partnerships New Frontiers in Cross-Branding

2 Comments Add your own

1. Twofish | 14 September 2007 at 12:20 am

What is also known in the academic community is that people who aren’t clinically ill seem to have a large fraction of family members who are. There is an analogy with sickle-cell trait in high malaria areas. If you have one gene, you end up with resistance to malaria, two genes you end up with a very nasty disease.

I strongly suspect that something similar happens in academia. Among physicists and mathematicians, the rate of full-blown schizophrenia I think is low because, with rare exceptions, schizophrenia is delbilating. However, physicists to seem to have a lot of close relatives with the disease (Einstein’s son for example). Also, the rate of major mood disorders seems to be very high among academics and writers. Unlike schizophrenia, bipolar disorder allows one to be generally functional in between bad episodes.

Also, I do think that the structure of academia interacts with mental issues. Academia is highly selective, and being selective tends to lead to lower diversity, and lower diversity causes lots of problems. People who do well in academia tend to be extremely moody, driven people, and there is a thin line between something that is highly functional, and something that completely breaks down.
2. dhoopes | 17 September 2007 at 11:11 am

I also believe there is a direct positive relationship between many measures of intelligence and frequency of mental illness. I wonder though if such people are more likely to seek help and thus simply get counted more. Not surprisingly, many writers, artists, and expressive people suffer from depression.