I was reading a post on the Parkies FB page that I follow and to my surprise the following statement was made:
“It is a well known fact that Parkinson’s brings out the creativity in PWP’s. It is one of the few gifts that we get from this unwelcome guest. For those who haven’t tried any arts and crafts I encourage you to give it a try, there are so many tutorials in the internet, you may surprise yourself!”
I have been commenting to my husband on how much more prolific I have been with writing poetry since my diagnosis. I was talking to someone today about it, the fact that I am writing more of it. He asked, ‘But is it any good?’ to which I reply – “Well, yes, I think it is and others seem to enjoy it!”
I found an article about this that makes interesting reading and have copied a quote from the study below.
“Much of the evidence for an association between dopaminergic treatment in PD and enhanced creativity is from case reports. For example, Schrag and Trimble (2001) described the case of a patient diagnosed with PD who 4 years after the diagnosis started treatment with L-DOPA. Over the 1st month of therapy, he began writing poetry for the first time in his life. He had never written poetry before nor felt the desire to do so, yet his grandfather had written poetries and he was related to a well-known Irish poet. Schrag and Trimble speculated that the effect of dopaminergic and serotonergic drugs, either through cognitive enhancement, increased perception or a hypomanic syndrome in addition to selective fronto-cortical dysfunction, led to the release of previously inhibited creative power in this patient (Schrag and Trimble, 2001).”
So maybe post diagnosis is a time for all of us is to try some creative endeavours, whether it is something we have done previously, but not tried in a while, or whether we try some new arts or crafts that maybe we thought we couldn’t do. It is nice to think that Parkies has gifted me an increased ability to write poetry and hope that in turn the writing keeps my brain functioning well.
Maybe it’s time for me to check out other creative endeavours and see how I do?
Why don’t you give it a try? You might be pleasantly surprised.
My journey with Parkinsons 