Mental Illness and Addiction: Intersections with Creativity, Resilience and Self-Sufficiency
By Victor Derango

With great interest I read Nadia Chaney’s article “Educating for Creativity” in the Vancouver Sun’s series on “12 big ideas to shape B.C’s resilient future.”

As a doctoral student researching the role of creativity in the experience of personal freedom and wealth, I am excited by its renewed place in public policy discussions. Especially exciting is to see creativity’s relevance extend beyond its traditional association with arts and culture and enter discussions concerning the sustainable health of individuals, communities and cities. A growing understanding of the interconnections between creativity, self-sufficiency, resilience and compassion bode well for our success in a world of increasingly scarce resources and continued ideological frictions.

Key in this project, of course, is what Nadia Chaney calls “educating for creativity,” or the re-education of education. According to Chaney, educating for creativity involves, among other things, a valuing of “innate knowledge and intuition,” the “fortification of group dynamics and inner strength,” and the guiding belief that “core knowledge is already inherent.”

The benefits of this kind of education can never be overestimated. In fact, in our re-education of education, we should not be surprised if we find a correlative decrease in the development and debilitating consequences of mental illness and drug addiction. That is because both mental illness and drug addiction have, among other things, much to do with a systemic failure to allow for creativity, idiosyncrasy and innate knowledge. At the same time, mental illness and drug addiction have much to  teach us about a kind of resilience and self-sufficiency that many of us would hesitate, for lack of understanding, to identify as such.

My big idea for shaping B.C.’s  resilient future—and for success in reaping what many voices from diverse fields are identifying as the social benefits of creativity—is a serious, fearless and ultimately hopeful examination of the complex of ways in which mental illness and drug addiction intersect with and inform issues of creativity, resilience and self-sufficiency. The success of any public policy aimed at fostering a creative and healthy populace will depend on the extent of its ability to develop a renewed understanding of these ‘afflictions’. Not least because our entry into a strained and uncertain future will be accompanied by increasing rates of both, we cannot afford to keep ignoring what mental illness and drug addiction can teach us about  frustrated minds, the social failure to allow for creativity, and the resilience of spirit. B.C. is uniquely positioned to answer the call and benefit from a courageous and sufficiently humble new look at these issues.

Please note: the opinions expressed in these stories are those of the authors and not necessarily shared or endorsed by Dialogue Programs