Many creative and gifted people have been diagnosed at some point in their lives with a mental illness. A diagnosis of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, for instance, can deeply affect our sense of identity and change the course of our life. The decision to take medications to treat a mental illness may also have a long-range impact on our physical and emotional well-being.

What are some of the considerations that lead sensitive and gifted adults to take psychiatric medications? What are some of the reasons people stop taking medications? What are the alternatives?

What makes creative and highly sensitive people accept, and even welcome, a diagnosis of bipolar disorder or other mental illness? Are psychiatrists equipped to recognize and support creativity, high sensitivity and giftedness?

That actually encouraged me as well. The fact that there weren’t that many women composers didn’t make me think “Well, I’m not going to do it.” It made me think, “Well I’m going to be the first.”

Dorothy Parker once excused herself for missing a deadline by telling her editor "Someone else was using the pencil." I was young when I first learned to fight my temptation to write. At 12 I had an idea for a novel. I thought cultures and political systems might be evolving much like an individual psyche. For years I mused on this idea...  When I finally shared my idea with a friend in college he said my book had already been written by a corrupt interloper named Thomas Mann and was called The Magic Mountain.