Art as a healthy response to an unhealthy environment
The ability to be creative or do anything at all during an illness
Research looking at the relationship between mood and creativity shows that people are most creative when they are in a good mood, and that exacerbation of mental disorders such as depression or schizophrenia directly reduces creativity. Art workers throughout their lives can have material problems, a tendency to abuse psychoactive substances, psychological trauma, and such people can be socially alienated or feel persecuted. In addition, other similar signs that are associated with mental disorders can occur in creative individuals. Thus, it can be assumed that creativity is associated with positive mood, happiness, and good mental health.
Daily human behaviour including cognitive, communicative and other types of activity are largely conditioned by the resources of the psychosomatic structures of consciousness. There are hardly any serious arguments to challenge this thesis. Reflections on the nature of consciousness and on how consciousness is even possible, presuppose an elucidation of the role of bodily-mental structures. These structures are preconditions for human life and consciousness. We do not own the body and use it for our own purposes, but rather the body owns us, limiting our possibilities. The body participates in every episode of our life and we could not neglect it even if we really wanted to. The psyche permeates all levels (from the deepest to the superficial) of the organisation of the body - the unconscious, consciousness, speech, as well as any acts of cognition and communication with people. Philosophical and theological traditions, deeply rooted in ancient mythologies, reinforce the conviction that the psychosomatic theme has always occupied one of the central places in thinking about the individual, as well as their consciousness, culture, history and society.
Many people with depression cannot experience emotions, including grief, joy, and pleasure, in the usual way. The world may seem colourless and lifeless. They lose interest and pleasure in activities that previously brought them pleasure. In most cases, a person suffering from depression has difficulty falling asleep and wakes up repeatedly, especially early in the morning. Some people with depression sleep more than usual. Poor appetite and weight loss can lead to general emaciation, and women may stop menstruating. However, with more moderate depression, on the contrary, overeating and weight gain are common. Some depressed people neglect personal hygiene or even their children, other loved ones, or pets. Some complain of having a physical illness, or various pains. Depressed people may experience intense feelings of guilt and self-abasement, as well as being unable to concentrate. In addition, they may feel despair, loneliness, and worthlessness. They are often indecisive and self-contained, feel helpless and hopeless, and have thoughts of death and suicide.
Dostoevsky often portrays his characters as undergoing a serious life crisis or even ruin. Failure is the permanent state of their undertakings and projects. In a state of failure, their souls discover in themselves a deep dissatisfaction, an incompleteness, and an alienation from the world, including other people and even themselves. World philosophy regards such a situation as a kind of dramatic norm of human destiny: from Heraclitus 'meaning-forming Discord and Parmenides', to Platonov Eros’ longing for what he himself is deprived of and what he is not, and onto Hegel's ‘unfortunate consciousness’ which reveals that our starting point in this world - ‘I’ - is still empty and indefinite. But in Dostoevsky's Russian philosophical and artistic discourse, this situation turns from dramatic to tragic, and the figure of an incomplete person is demonised. “Torn away” from the soil and from life, they accumulate in themselves a special kind of force, but this force is often presented as destructive. An individual in their search for themself is doomed to find not themself but the devil, or rather find nothing, since the devil, according to Dostoevsky, is nothing but the spirit of non-being. Becoming, procedurality are impious stigmas for Russian thought and spirit, fraught with revolutions and moral catastrophe. Dostoevsky rejects dialectics; his works are designed to show that there is only life (the real, true, good, and divine) and nothing opposed to it (the devilish and deadly). Failure is a fatal seal on a person, meaning that they are affected by nothing, and all prospects become closed for them.
A person feels like a complete insignificance, unable to create absolutely nothing.
Ideational and motor retardation are also symptoms of the change in the entire neuropsychic tone which is observed in depression, and can have varying degrees of severity.
A slight degree of ideational inhibition can be noticed only by the patient themselves, and can be felt as a decrease in intelligence, difficulties in solving habitual everyday issues (patients may describe themselves as feeling ‘dull’), impaired attention, along with associated errors. In severe cases, a slowdown in the course of ideational processes is noticeable clinically in the form of slow thinking, monosyllabic responses after long pauses, etc. Sometimes ideational inhibition is so pronounced that, due to the inability of such patients to solve even simple mental tasks, they are mistakenly thought to have dementia.
A mild degree of motor retardation is perceived by the patient as increased fatigue, slowdown in performing routine tasks, and difficulty in starting tasks. To a more pronounced degree, changes in facial expressions become noticeable (such as with an under-expressive or sullen face), as well as pantomimics (e.g. a decrease in physical expression, a general slowness of movements, lack of variation in posture, shoulders often lowered, back hunched over). Patients in this state prefer to lie in bed, and any activity is made with difficulty and stress. The severity of slowness of movements can reach a state of depressive stupor (complete immobility).
Emotional coarsening involves the loss of higher (moral, aesthetic, intellectual) emotions and feelings, as well as subtle emotional differentiations. Patients lose their previously inherent interests and attachments, along with the ability to feel compassion, to care for loved ones, show restraint, or act with courtesy (tact). Their behaviour is dominated by primitive emotional reactions (biologically conditioned emotions), aimed at satisfying their momentary needs. Patients become annoying, arrogant, and do not observe elementary decency.
