IQ Tests and Mental Health

Test Your IQ and Improve Your Health

Based on studies carried out over a long period of time, high scores on IQ tests have been seen to be quite reliable predictors of good mental health.

On the whole, for example, people with higher scores on IQ tests have been seen to be less prone to various psychoses than people who score lower on the same tests. Even for the relatively less serious forms of mental illness, a high score on IQ tests has been seen to be a predictor of less predisposition - and as such a person who scores higher on IQ tests is less prone to fall victim to 'milder' mental illnesses like depression. And in the long run, people scoring higher on IQ tests earlier in their lives are also less likely to experience severe mental disability (dementia) as they age, and when they do, the age-related mental disability is likely to set on much later than for people scoring lower on their IQ tests. There are several possible explanations for this correlation between high IQ test scores and good mental health.

For one, if IQ tests do what they are designed to do - which is to measure intelligence - it would follow that a person scoring higher on the tests, a person who would thus be a more intelligent person as it were, would be more likely to maintain higher standards of 'mental hygiene' than a person scoring lower on the various IQ tests. For instance, such a 'highly intelligent' person would be less likely to hold grudges, which are more often than not the factors underlying most cases of depression. Such a 'highly intelligent' person would also be more likely to better resolves various issues as they arise in their life than a person of 'lower intelligence' thus avoiding another major source of depression - unresolved issues.

If IQ tests are indeed accurate tests of intelligence, it would also follow that a person scoring higher on them - who would thus be a more intelligent person - would be less likely to indulge in taking various 'mind altering' drugs - which are a major cause of various psychoses and other serious mental health problems.

And if IQ tests are indeed accurate tests of intelligence, it would further follow that a person scoring highly on them would conversely be a highly intelligent person and would be in a position to manage the stress in their lives in a better way. This would in turn reduce their predisposition to some forms of mental illness like depression - which is often caused by poor stress management, and some forms of psychoses - like the so called 'temporary psychosis' which is said to be caused by extreme stress. Furthermore, since high IQ scores correlate with higher incomes, it follows that a person getting higher IQ test scores would (at least going by the statistics) have a higher income than a person scoring lower on the same tests, thus making them immune to the many stresses associated with low incomes and which are cause to lots of mental health problems.

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