“Creative Mind Challenge” Offers Inspiration, Pressure to the Mentally Ill

Enervive, an advocacy group dedicated to “encouraging the creativity within all mental disorders”, has issued its Creative Mind Challenge.

The challenge, which can be found at http://www.enervive.com, calls for people with mental disorders to “create or make significant progress on creative work[s] of [their] own” within exactly one week. If unsuccessful, the challenge may be retaken without penalty.

The reward for completing the challenge is the privilege of displaying a special Award banner on one’s website or blog. However, there are no judges for the challenge. Participants are trusted to display the Award banner only if they feel they have succeeded, using the honor system.

Led by anonymous volunteers, Enervive aims to improve attitudes within and toward mental illness, primarily by empowering people with mental illnesses to think of their conditions as gifts of “unusual creativity.”