Poetry can heal

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/jun/18/poetry-can-heal-it-helped-me-through-depression

“Arguably, it may be the refusal to create one’s art that causes distress in the first place. John Keats, a licensed apothecary, as was Dante, trained unhappily as a doctor and experienced depression accordingly: his brother feared that if John didn’t become a poet he would kill himself. An unanswered calling can take its revenge, and Gwyneth Lewis’s memoir of depression, Sunbathing in the Rain, notes that it was her resistance to writing poetry that made her ill: “If you don’t do what your poetry wants you to, it will be out to get you. Unwritten poems are a force to be feared.””

I doubt if everyone is like Gwyneth Lewis but I agree unused capacity can make people ill.That’s why Evening Classes were so beneficial to ordinary people with a desire to learn.Very few are left now thanks to Mrs Thatcher.