Poetry, the creative process and mental illness

By Alex Hudson
BBC News

Published7 February 2011

Byron was "mad, bad and dangerous to know" according to one lover, Keats was driven to distraction by obsessive love and Sylvia Plath ended her own life.

Depression, madness and insanity are themes which have run throughout the history of poetry.

The incidence of mood disorders, suicide and institutionalisation was 20 times higher among major British and Irish poets between 1600 and 1800 according to a study by psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison.

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