Many creative people experience depression. It is vital to get help, but also to consider how we label and respond to mental health challenges.
In her article “Clinical Depression Then and Now,” Patricia Waldron, M.D. noted that art historian Erwin Panofsky referred to this famous artwork, Melencolia I (from 1514) as Albrecht Dürer’s “spiritual self-portrait.”
She added, “We know, indeed, that Dürer thought of himself as melancholic and frequently experienced dejection and a sense of ‘powerlessness’ in the face of the staggering intellectual and technical demands he placed on himself."