I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are. The notion that genius is only thinly separated from insanity goes back at least to ancient Greece. Aristotle linked the two when he said, “There is no great genius without a touch of madness.”*

Many of history's most celebrated creative geniuses were mentally ill, from renowned artists Vincent van Gogh and Frida Kahlo to literary giants Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe.

Of course, no one is bursting with creative energy during a severe bout of depression or schizophrenia. Above all, these conditions are debilitating and even life-threatening, the scientists said, and although society benefits from the productivity of its tortured geniuse...