As a species, we hold intelligence as a value and often infer that being “smart” gives a person options and makes all things better in their lives. In mental health, there is no direct correlation. In fact, there may be an inverse one. Higher intelligence may be understandably associated with greater potential for developing mental illness.
In forty years of clinical practice, I have observed that depressions and serious thought disorders occur more frequently and with greater intensity in people with conspicuously higher intelligence. Are smart people mentally healthier? Not necessarily.
About Intelligence
Intelligence has been defined in many ways.
“Intelligence”, as used here, has two basic components. 1) The ability to learn new information, and 2) The ability to adaptively apply information that has been learned to new situations. People who have broad capacities in both of these areas are those who will be seen as being smart and will often score well on standardized intelligence tests.
A person with higher intelligence is aware of more and is processing new information at a higher rate than people with less of this “adaptive” learning intelligence.
The ability of more intelligent people to absorb new information may actually render them more vulnerable to developing depression and schizophrenia.
Intelligence and Depression
The relationship between intelligence and depression has been the subject of slight research but increasing attention of therapists for many years.
The aspect of depression that is ‘reactive’ (not a genetic predisposition) is often associated with the disharmony and discomfort experienced in knowing that what ‘is’ is far afield from how a person would want it to be. The more one is aware of, the greater the chances that this disharmony will be noticed and reacted to. Each gap between what is seen as the ideal and what is actually experienced is a ‘depression seed.’ The fields of the more intelligent mind are fertile receptors of these seeds.
A less intelligent person is, simply, aware of less and while intelligence is not a requisite of depression, the old adage that “ignorance is bliss” may sometimes have some relative merit.
The more one knows, the more things there are that might make a person unhappy.
Intelligence and Thought Disorders
Schizophrenia is probably the most widely recognized form of mental illness falling under the general heading of Thought Disorders. While it is known that there is often a significant bio-genetic aspect to these illnesses, the inherited vulnerability is often triggered by real life experiences.
As the more intelligent person is processing new information at a higher volume and more quickly than a person with less latent intellectual ability, it becomes more probable that some of that new learning will be in conflict with other things the person has learned. The human mind can be deluged to the point of becoming dysfunctional by a tsunami of conflicting information.
One psychological mechanism that can kick in while attempting to resolve conflicting knowledge is the development of a thought disorder. The mind, in a sense, tries to cope with the things it ‘knows’ by creating imagined and sometimes dangerous relationships between things when, in fact, no actual relationship exists at all.
This is a core aspect of schizophrenia and other thought disorders.
The more intelligent one is the more likely one is to notice, become confused and sometimes overwhelmed by the conflicting knowledge experienced and absorbed each and every day.
In Summary
All smart people are neither depressed nor schizophrenic. Their vulnerabilities toward these mental illnesses do seem, however, to be stronger than those vulnerabilities in the less intelligent population.