Many of us believe that being highly intelligent means academic success, countless career opportunities, and therefore more money. But can a lot of intelligence really bring happiness?
There are situations where people with high IQ who have achieved many successes in life have to cope with the same characteristics. In this article, we will solve the equation between very intelligent people and diseases such as depression and anxiety. Contrary to what we all know, we have been hearing the name of these diseases, which are not at all simple, lately.
Let’s take a quick look at what these two mental disorders, which are at the forefront of the psychological diseases of our age, actually mean.
Anxiety is an emotion we experience many times when things go wrong in our lives. However, in anxiety disorder, that is, anxiety; The person feels constantly anxious, even for no real reason. It may even come to situations where it cannot cope with this anxious, anxious mood.
Depression or major depressive disorder; It is the state of a person’s sad mood constantly continuing and losing interest in many things around him.
Existential depression, which is one of the types of depression; It results from the inability to find answers to the deep questions one asks about life, arising from the search for meaning in life. This is where the war of the over-intelligent people, who are our protagonists, begins at this point.
High IQ paves the way for anxiety and depression
In a scientific study published in Science Direct; It was revealed that people with an IQ higher than 130 were more prone to psychological diseases.
This research on the susceptibility of highly intelligent people to mental disorders was conducted with 3715 members of the American Mensa. Mensa, the International Society for the Gifted and Talented; It is the largest and oldest known high IQ community.
Highly intelligent people are 2 times more likely to get mental illnesses than other people!
While walking on the street, you are less than 10% likely to encounter a person with anxiety, while this rate is 20% for members of the American Mensa community.
As a result of psychological tests conducted with American Mensa participants, it was revealed that 26.7% of the participants had mental disorders such as depression and bipolar. While people with such mental illnesses make up about 10% of the society, 26.7% is not an insignificant rate.
How do psychological disorders relate to intelligence level?
Highly intelligent people cannot remain indifferent to many events and deep problems in life. In other words, besides our daily superficial problems, they grapple with different question marks.
In this adventure that started in childhood, children with high IQ even at that age; They ponder questions that we don’t actually think about in our daily hustle, such as how a person adds meaning to the world, why people say things they don’t mean, why hypocrites do this.
Even though they want to talk to the people around them and fill in the blanks in their minds, they do not get the reactions they expect from the environment, and they often encounter strange looks. Over-intelligent people who cannot find the answer to their question marks are more likely to experience existential depression over time.
As a result; It is known that people with high IQ, whose awareness is higher than other people, have a higher risk of developing depression and anxiety than other people. Of course, this does not mean that everyone who suffers from anxiety or depression is too smart.
Sources: 1, 2
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