{"id":231515,"date":"2026-02-17T09:02:48","date_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/standard-mental-health-tests-may-be-inaccurate-for-highly-intelligent-people"},"modified":"2026-02-17T09:02:48","modified_gmt":"2026-02-17T15:02:48","slug":"standard-mental-health-tests-may-be-inaccurate-for-highly-intelligent-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/standard-mental-health-tests-may-be-inaccurate-for-highly-intelligent-people","title":{"rendered":"Standard mental health tests may be inaccurate for highly intelligent people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/standard-mental-health-tests-may-be-inaccurate-for-highly-intelligent-people.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The researchers found that as intelligence scores rise, the questions on common mental health surveys lose their ability to consistently measure the underlying psychological condition. These results were published in the journal <em><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.intell.2025.101963\" target=\"_blank\">Intelligence<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The concept of the \u201ctortured genius\u201d is a cultural staple. It suggests that high intelligence is accompanied by social isolation, existential anxiety, or other psychological difficulties. Previous research on this topic has produced conflicting results. Many large-scale studies indicate that intelligence generally correlates with better health and happiness.<\/p>\n<p>However, other researchers argue that this relationship might not be a simple straight line. They propose a \u201cnonlinear\u201d relationship. This means intelligence could be protective up to a certain point, but extremely high levels might eventually lead to negative outcomes. This phenomenon is sometimes called the \u201ctoo-much-of-a-good-thing\u201d effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The researchers found that as intelligence scores rise, the questions on common mental health surveys lose their ability to consistently measure the underlying psychological condition. These results were published in the journal Intelligence. The concept of the \u201ctortured genius\u201d is a cultural staple. It suggests that high intelligence is accompanied by social isolation, existential anxiety, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1495,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-231515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}