Mental illness on the stage and screen is often portrayed in extreme ways, and not just for dramatic effect. In Western culture psychic pain has tended to be seen as the territory of the artist, visionary, rebel and genius, from Emily Dickinson to Sylvia Plath and Friedrich Nietzsche to John Forbes Nash Jr. So it should be no surprise that madness is often used to signify creativity, sensitivity or spiritual and intellectual depth.<\/p>\n
In \u201cProof,\u201d\u009d for instance, a troubled math prodigy fears she will unravel like her brilliant father, and in \u201cEquus,\u201d\u009d recently revived on Broadway, an emotionally flattened psychiatrist envies his young patient\u2019s creative religious passion, however warped. In \u201cOne Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest\u201d\u009d mental illness is portrayed as the only refuge of the social misfit.<\/p>\n
\u201cDepression can appear to embody an aesthetic or moral or even political stance,\u201d\u009d the author and psychologist Peter D. Kramer writes in his book \u201cAgainst Depression.\u201d\u009d In our culture, he added, it \u201cis what tuberculosis was 100 years ago: illness that signifies refinement.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Brian Yorkey, 38, and Tom Kitt, 35, the creators of \u201cnext to normal,\u201d\u009d were keenly aware of that romantic strain and studiously worked to avoid it. \u201cSomeone said to make her a painter,\u201d\u009d Mr. Yorkey said of the protagonist, Diana. \u201cI said no. She\u2019s a suburban mother.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n