Investigating the Impact That Mental Illness has had on the Creative Output of 5 Jazz Musicians: An Overview of my Current Research Project
5th March 2026
Thank you for clicking on this blog article. The following entry discusses the current research project that I am undertaking for my Creative Music Practice MA at Liverpool hope University. Below I provide an overview of current literature surrounding this topic, the methods this project adopts and the importance of this research.
Growing up with a dad who played bass for different jazz bands, the sounds and creativity of Jaco Pastorius, John Coltrane and many more always echoed. Learning about the artists, transcribing their solos and learning their compositions has been a central part of my practice over the past years.
The more I read and heard about some of the key figures in jazz throughout the 20th century, it became clear that those who struggled with mental illnesses such as substance use disorder and mood disorders were overrepresented. This is where my interest in this topic began.
The overrepresentation that I assumed appears to be backed by the academic literature not only in music, but across many major creative industries, including creative writing and art. Research on the prevalence of mood disorders among poets and authors has consistently indicated disproportional rates of people rates of people with mood disorders. This is best illustrated by Kaufman (2001) who studied the medical history of 1629 writers and finding significant overrepresentation of people with mood disorders but particularly in females, with female poets exhibiting the highest prevalence. I have only been able to locate one study that specifically investigates the prevalence of mood disorder among jazz musicians. Wills (2018) studied the biographical data of 40 key jazz musicians across the 20th century, using the DSM IV (1994) criteria to retrospectively diagnose the musicians with different mental illnesses. He found that 3 demonstrated symptoms schizophrenia while 11 appeared to have a mood disorder (such as bipolar disorder or depressive disorder). My current project however aims to find whether there is a direct link between the mood states caused by these mood disorders and their creative output. There has not yet been any direct research into the direct impact that mood disorders can have on creative output.
I have adopted a 3 part methodology for investigating this question, starting with the selection of 5 case studies. Each case study chosen for this project had to fit the following criteria. Each must have received a diagnoses of bipolar disorder or schizophrenia disorder during their lifetime or after their death, and each must have been an innovator of 20th century jazz. The case studies selected are as follows:
John Coltrane:
Saxophonist, diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his death
Charles Mingus:
Upright bass. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his death
Thelonious Monk:
Pianist. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder after his death
Jaco Pastorius:
Electric bass. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder
Bud Powell.
Pianist. Diagnosed with Schizophrenia disorder
The second stage of the methodology was selecting appropriate biographical sources in order to map periods in which each artist to be significantly affected by certain mood impacting variables. The variables that are mapped in this project are:
A: Periods in which the artist appeared to be in a manic state
B: Periods in which the artist appeared to be in a depressive state
C: Periods in which the artist appear to be impacted by alcohol abuse
D: Periods in which the artist appeared to be impacted by substance abuse
E: Periods in which another significant mood impacting variable was present (eg. death of a loved one or divorce)
Although this study focusses exclusively on the artists' mood disorders, variables C, D and E were mapped in order to reduce the impact of confounding variables.
After these variables were mapped, periods in which one or more of these variables were present were selected and recordings were selected of the artists playing during these years.
Stage 3 of the methodology of this project involves taking the recordings, putting them on a survey then ciculating it exclusively among jazz musicians, who will then rate each recording out of 10 on the creativity, coherence and technical ability displayed by the artist, providing comparable figures for each metric, for each recording.
I am currently reading the biographical sources that I selected. I will continue to post updates on this project as it progresses.
Thank you for reading,
Sean O'Donnell