A sign of intelligence...really?

Ok, so maybe I'm pushing it a little here. I remember reading an article about a study that purportedly showed that depressed people are more realistic and intelligent than people who are not depressed. (Can't find it online tonight) The explanation about why intelligent people suffer from depression made a lot of sense, but...yeah, I think the conclusion is bull, too. Stupid people can become depressed. Hell, my dog has been depressed.

Still, you can't knock the fact that a LOT of famously successful people have had to grapple with depression. The list below came from all of 2 websites, and certainly doesn't cover all. The point is this: depression is not a recipe for failure. It is a health issue that has to be dealt with. People who are prone to depression can be wildly successful...and happy.

So I feel a little better about having to search out and find a shrink, tearfully explain my woes in a nutshell, and go pick up a new Rx here in my new town. In fact, I wish I'd done it sooner. I've been through hell since I got here, and I want to enjoy this place.


Here's the list - not such bad company to keep. If you don't recognize at least a handful of people here, you haven't been paying attention:

Musicians: Adam Ant, Adam Duritz, Billy Corgan, Billy Joel, Brian Wilson, John Denver, Kurt Cobain, Olivia Newton-John, Pete Wentz, Sheryl Crow, Trent Reznor, Malcolm Arnold, Richard Ashcroft, David Banner, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Joe Budden, Anthony Callea, Melanie Chisholm (English), Leonard Cohen, River Cuomo, Ian Curtis, Nick Drake, Nelly Furtado, John Frusciante, Carlos Guesaldo, Michael Hutchence, Natalie Imbruglia, Janet Jackson, Daniel Johns, Henry James, Samuel Johnson, Kool Keith, Beyonce Knowles, John Lennon, Oscar Lopez, Gustav Mahler, Brian May, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Morrissey, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Trent Reznor, Hans Rott, Britney Spears, Layne Staley, Elliott Smith, Siegfried Sasson, Robert Schumann, James Taylor, Pyotr Ilyick Tchaikovsky, Jeff Tweedy, Ville Valo, Billy West, Robbie Williams, Hugo Wolf, Thom Yorke

Writers (including philosophers who wrote books): Amy Tan, Anne Rice, J.K. Rowling, Mark Roget (yes, of the thesaurus), Tennessee Williams, Hans Christian Anderson, Machado de Assis, Raymond Chandler, Iris Chang, Agatha Christie, Catherine Cookson, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot, James Ellroy, Michel Foucault (French philosopher), Stephen Fry, Spalding Gray, Graham Greene, Ernest Hemingway, Margaux Hemingway, Geoffrey Hill, Sarah Kane, Susanna Kaysen, John Keats, Soren Kierkegard, Federico Garcia Lorca, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Guy de Maupassant, Herman Melville, Charlotte Mew, Friedrich Nietzsche, John Stuart Mill, Eugene O’Neill, Gwenyth Paltron, Ryan Phillippe, Janos Pilinszky, Sylvia Plat, Edgar Allen Poe, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Styron, Will Self, Anne Sexton, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, Georg Trackl, Ned Vizzini, Kurt Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Elizabeth Wurtzel, William Carlos Williams, Walt Whitman, Evelyn Waugh, David Foster Wallace

Actors / Personalities: Ashley Judd, Brooke Shields, Delta Burke, Dick Cavett, Drew Carey, Emma Thompson, Harrison Ford, Heath Ledger, Hugh Laurie, Jeffrey Sebelia, Jim Carrey, Marie Osmond, Mike Wallace (news), Owen Wilson, Richard Jeni, Rodney Dangerfield, Rosie O’Donnell, Caroline Aherne, Parveen Babi, Maria Bamford, Patty Duke, Kirsten Dunst, Tony Hancock, Andrew Hansen, Elizabeth Hartman, Anne Hathaway, Jung Da Bin, Alan Ladd, Denis Lawson, Paul Merton, Spike Milligan, Billie Oddie, Patton Oswalt, Ronnie O’Sullivan, Charlotte Rampling, Vivian Stanshall, Sarah Silverman, Rod Steiger, Jean Seberg, Catherine Tate, Denise Welch

Directors: Woody Allen, Hideaki Anno, Ingmar Bergman, David Chase, Akira Kurosawa, Lars Von Trier

Politicians: Boris Yeltsin, Diana, Princess of Wales (Great Britain), former Senator Thomas F. Eagleton, Winston Churchill (Great Britain), Claus von Amsberg (Germany), Kjell Magne Bondevik (Norway), Lawton Chiles, Romeo Dallaire (Canada), Doug Duncan, Marcus Epstein, Geoff Gallop, Romain Gary, Abraham Lincoln, George Wilton

Scientists: Buzz Aldrin (astronaut), David Bohm (physicist), Paul Feyerabend, Sir Julian Huxley, Isaac Newton, Robert Oppenheimer, Jim Salinger, Kevin Whitrick, Lewis Wolpert

Athletes: Terry Bradsaw, Robert Enke, Zack Greinke, Eddie Griffin, John Kirwin, Neil Lennon, Bill Pulsipher, Delonte West

Artists: Vincent Van Gogh, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Francisco de Goya, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Henri Matisse, Michelangelo, Joan Miro, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Brian Sewell (art critic)

Academic: Robert Burton

Others: Paul Getty (British philanthropist), Herbert Hart (British philosopher), William James (American philosopher and psychologist), David Kelly (English weapons and biological warfare expert), Meriwether Lewis (American explorer), Martin Luther (German priest and theologian), Henri Paul (Princess Diana’s chauffeur), T. Boone Pickens, Jr. (oil tycoon), John D. Rockefeller

(sources: depression dot about dot com and wikipedia)