Creative people have a need to understand, to empathize, and to experience in order to create. This makes them more prone to a unique kind of depression, explains Dr. Maisel-often of non-physiological origin and therefore resistant to pharmaceuticals. Drawing lessons from the experience of artists who struggled with depression, such as Van Gogh and William Styron, his four-step non-pharmaceutical treatment plan involves strategies to harness the depression and put it to work for creative good. November.