[Pseudoscience-is-malarkey (OP)]

Obviously most, if not all, humans have some degree, some element of creative functioning in their brain, but are people with higher levels of creativity than the average person more prone to melancholy?

[alancalverd]

I think you would have a hard time separating cause and effect on this topic. The "creative industries" offer huge rewards to the occasional Picasso or Lennon, but for every one who makes it to the top there are several thousand doing signwriting and pub gigs, with all the uncertainty of selfemployment in a one-man business driven by fashion rather than need, so subject to every downward pressure.

What I find more remarkable is the number of lefthanded creatives.

[charles1948]

Obviously most, if not all, humans have some degree, some element of creativity in their brain, but do people with higher levels of creativity than the average person more prone to melancholy?

Persons who are "creative" like to come up with new ideas.  But they're bound to get depressed.

Because their new ideas don't get a favourable response from "average" persons. Who just want to carry on doing what they've always done. With no interest in anything innovative.

You can see this from studying the archaeological history of the Stone Ages.  During which successive generations of
 average humans went on chipping stone tools - all of the same essential design -  for tens of thousands of years. The same tools, over and over again. With an astonishing lack of creativity.

Perhaps there were melancholic Stone Age innovators, who'd been thrown out of the camp, for suggesting that the
 strange metallic "copper" which sometimes oozed from heated stone-hearths, might be investigated as a potential new tool-making material.

[Bored chemist]

Because their new ideas don't get a favourable response from "average" persons. Who just want to carry on doing what they've always done. With no interest in anything innovative.

I challenge you to come up with a better design of stone axe.

[charles1948]

Because their new ideas don't get a favourable response from "average" persons. Who just want to carry on doing what they've always done. With no interest in anything innovative.

I challenge you to come up with a better design of stone axe.

Well that's the point.  Once successive generations of Stone Age people had exhaustively perfected the stone-axe, why did it take them 50,000 years to move to metal Copper, Bronze and Iron axes.

Were they not very creative?  Or did they waste their creativity in painting distorted pictures of bisons on cave walls.
 
Instead of engaging in weapons-research.

[alancalverd]

An engineer is a person who designs 5 cent solutions to 50 dollar problems. The stone axe was good enough for the purpose (from dismembering whales to human brain surgery), carbon neutral, amazingly sharp,  and remained in common use outside of Eurasia until the 19th century. That's really good engineering.

Stone-based societies colonised Australia and New Zealand long before the white man even knew about them, and survived throughout the Americas from the Arctic to the Southern Ocean.

The only thing it isn't good for, is killing other humans, so intellectually backward societies developed bronze and iron. 

Cave paintings are particularly amazing. The representations of other species at Lascaux again show the engineering mind at work: we all know what humans look like, so pin men depict the hunters, but the bison are brilliant caricatures that emphasise the important aspects of a really healthy animal. What still baffles me is that we have no "scrap" cave paintings from any culture: no evidence of children or even advanced students learning the trade, just exceptionally well crafted final products, in places that can only be seen with artificial light. It's almost as if every 10,000 years or so just one Picasso demonstrates an innate and untutored talent.

[EuniceSmith]

good question, since I study at the Faculty of Psychology, I ask myself this question. But more remarkable, I wrote an essay with the help of a helpful source and noticed that many creative people experienced not only depression, but also schizophrenia or certain behavioral factors like in schizophrenia.

Many cheeky people can become aggressive in a matter of seconds and then calm again, which is a sign of schizophrenia. Therefore, it seems to me that depression can be inextricably linked with schizophrenia.

[charles1948]

Cave paintings are particularly amazing. The representations of other species at Lascaux again show the engineering mind at work: we all know what humans look like, so pin men depict the hunters, but the bison are brilliant caricatures that emphasise the important aspects of a really healthy animal.

That is one of the most perceptive observations that I've ever read.

It explains why, in Paleolithic cave paintings,  the humans were sketchily drawn as crude "stick figures". 

Whereas the bison were depicted with all the skill and artistry that the Stone Age painters had at their command.

Sometimes, one comes across an observation that is genuinely enlightening.  And changes one's view ever after.

Your post has done that for me.  Thanks !

[LookOut2021]

I think you would have a hard time separating cause and effect on this topic. The "creative industries" offer huge rewards to the occasional Picasso or Lennon, but for every one who makes it to the top there are several thousand doing signwriting and pub gigs, with all the uncertainty of selfemployment in a one-man business driven by fashion rather than need, so subject to every downward pressure.

I can only agree to that comment. "Creative industries" are usually very rough places, high pressure, tensions between producers, beeing forced to work on stuff you have no connection with, often siging off the rights of your work completly to some faceless cooperation - all that causes stress and insecurity. Considering the fact how fast some trends vanish today the pressure to lasting on someones mind must be huge.