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Intelligent People More At Risk of Mental Illness, Study Finds (independent.co.uk)
schwit1 shares a report from The Independent: The stereotype of a tortured genius may have a basis in reality after a new study found that people with higher IQs are more at risk of developing mental illness. A team of U.S. researchers surveyed 3,715 members of American Mensa with an IQ higher than 130. An "average IQ score" or "normal IQ score" can be defined as a score between 85 and 115. The team asked the Mensa members to report whether they had been diagnoses with mental illnesses, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They were also asked to report mood and anxiety disorders, or whether the suspected they suffered from any mental illnesses that had yet to be diagnosed, as well as physiological diseases, like food allergies and asthma. After comparing this with the statistical national average for each illness they found that those in the Mensa community had considerably higher rates of varying disorders. While 10 per cent of the general population were diagnosed with anxiety disorder, that rose to 20 percent among the Mensa community, according to the study which published in the Science Direct journal.
Popular people are just more stupid. Popularity tends to do that. Being anti-popular tends to make you a book worm / computer nerd. Popular = busy with humans. Anti-popular = busy with knowledge.
"However, the study pointed out that a high IQ was not the cause of mental illness, but it could be correlated with the highly intelligent community."
Or a high IQ could be correlated with better jobs and better health benefits, therefore leading to more diagnoses of mental illness.
Or mental health professionals could have more difficulty identifying mental illnesses in those with lower IQ.
Or.
Or.
Where are the controls? I realize that relying on subject-reported data in studies is necessary in some cases, but I believe they could've done better than this.
I envy those people I know who are capable of insanity and irrationality.
So far my brain just won't break.
But alzheimers or dementia are probably in my late 70s.
It's a problem because the rational person sees a lot of the bad in the world and can't really alleviate their own suffering other than by taking mind altering substances or temporarily distracting activities.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Members of MENSA more likely to have access to health care, including psychiatric kind.
Film at... umm... whenever. Just stream the goddamn thing.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Mensa is not an acronym, and should not be spelled with all caps.
At their annual conferences, the one surefire way to pack a presentation to standing room only is to have the subject be anything to do with autism.
The sample populations here are terrible, but I can accept the overall proposition as plausible.
My theory would mostly center around the idea that higher intelligence is associated with a diminished ability to accept falsifiable or non-provable platitudes, optimism and superstitious thinking. This leads to a deficit of coping mechanisms for the difficulties of every day life and hardships, resulting increased stress, pessimism and negative thoughts and ideation. You might even oversimplify it as a lack of hope in some ways.
Less intelligent people may find superstitions (including but not just religious belief) easier to accept, especially if provided by authority figures. They're more likely to believe in optimistic future outcomes, including improbable ones, not out of gullibility but because they lack the understanding of why they are unlikely -- it's a "I can win the lottery" mindset. This provides a wealth of coping mechanisms for dealing with ordinary setbacks and problems, reducing stress and anxiety. Jesus won't _really_ set you free, but if you're dumb enough to believe it, he will actually set you free.
All this being said, it's probably just as easy to believe that people with an interest in joining an exclusive high IQ group are also people with a low sense of self esteem who are prone to depression. Belonging to a group that's not only exclusive but also exclusively for high intelligence people provides them with a sense of validation and superiority, but for many it's not enough and they wind up depressed and anxious anyway.
But I guess all of it could be true to some extent.
The stereotype of a tortured genius may have a basis in reality after a new study found that people with higher IQs are more at risk of developing mental illness. A team of U.S. researchers surveyed 3,715 members of American Mensa with an IQ higher than 130. An "average IQ score" or "normal IQ score" can be defined as a score between 85 and 115.
Another interpretation of the data is that people who join American Mensa have a higher probability of having a mental illness. There's even a very plausible mechanism for this, people with a mental illness often look for ways to treat that illness, joining a group of people they can potentially relate to (ie Mensa) is one way to deal with their illness.
I stole this Sig
Yeah, forget about silly things like personality and common interests.
They have subgroups for many common interests. Their members have a range of personalities, which you can explore by, you know, talking to them and socializing.
I am not a member, but I know people that are. They are weird, but not abnormally so.
The real weirdos are the people that feel a need to express their illusion of superiority by preaching about why they refuse to join every time Mensa is mentioned. Those people are worse than vegans.
I know, I know -- I read it. I'm sorry.
So highly intelligent people focus more on the shit going on around them and melt down over it.
I'd say this might be somewhat of a misrepresentation of the situation. It's not about focusing on shit, any more than spotting a tiger lurking in the shadows, triggering your fight or flight response, is about focus. Your actual focus is elsewhere when the particular brain module triggers. Since, as with many of our brain's hair trigger modules, there's a significant false positive rate (faces in clouds / crackers) your endocrine system, in working overtime, leads to side effects such as neural fatigue, inflammation, and so on.
A reasonable working hypothesis might be that some of these brain modules are also useful for things for which they didn't evolve, such as the pattern matching module helping with the visual aspect of the IQ tests, or the social inference module helping with the language aspects of the IQ tests. The more 'competent' your module is the higher your IQ but the more times it gives a false positive. And it turns out that seeing a tiger hiding in every shadow or feeling crippling embarrassment every time you're in company is not good for your mental health.
The more oblivious percentiles brush it off (if they even noticed it at all) and move on with their lives. That seems about right.
Yup. That does sound about right.