It’s not often discussed, but I believe that pre-cursors to commonly-diagnosed mental disorders often come with some benefits (as well as “flip side” costs that are linked to those benefits). As these traits become more extreme in nature (e.g., sufficiently far in the direction of what would be considered a diagnosable clinical disorder), these “flip side” costs (as well as other costs not associated with any benefit) unfortunately, tend to rapidly outweigh any positive aspects.
Here are some possible examples of positive traits that may be associated with low (pre-clinical) levels of commonly diagnosed disorders, and the flip side costs that seem to go with these benefits.
Bipolar Disorder: euphoria, enthusiasm, confidence, feelings of invincibility, or enhanced charisma during manic episodes (flip side cost: overly optimistic or rash decision-making)
Paranoid Schizophrenia: noticing connections between things, or patterns that other people don’t generally notice (flip side cost: believing in false connections)
Depression: seeing certain aspects of the world more realistically, especially the dark side of things (flip side cost: less optimism)
Generalized Anxiety Disorder: a greater likelihood of detecting, pre-empting and avoiding dangerous situations (flip side cost: rumination on possible dangers that are unlikely to manifest, reduced ability to “live in the moment”)
Social Anxiety Disorder: a greater focus on potentially useful social information (flip side cost: avoidance of, or unpleasant stress during, social situations, and excessive social compliance)
OCD: increased carefulness or conscientiousness in certain domains, such as when reading a contract (flip side cost: excessive checking, doubting, or redoing)
Autism: perceiving useful or beautiful details that others miss (flip side cost: information overload, missing some details that matter to others)
Narcissistic Personality Disorder: appearing to some types of people as highly impressive, important, confident, or charismatic (flip side cost: appearing to other types of people as conceited, arrogant or self-aggrandizing)
Borderline Personality Disorder: greater reactivity to positive stimuli with intensely felt emotions (flip side cost: greater reactivity to negative stimuli with intensely felt emotions)
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