Background: In the field of psychology, stress and creativity are two phenomena that have been disputed by many researchers, claiming that their in between relationship is controversial. In the interim, many researches have focused on analyzing the relationship between mental illness (e.g., bipolar disorder) and creativity; only a few though have been able to draw on a systematic investigation apropos the link between creativity, anxiety, and depression.

Objectives: The main objective of the present study was to identify the effect of stress on creativity and further investigate if anxiety and depression mediate their in between relationship.Method: A random sample of 233 students from Linnaeus University participated in the study. The questionnaires distributed consisted of 87 items; 10 items for stress, 7 items for anxiety, 20 items for depression, and 50 items for creativity. The survey was in both English and Swedish.

Results: A parallel mediation analysis was used to examine the relationship between stress and creativity mediated by depression and anxiety. The data was assessed for outliers within each group; all tests were performed separately. The results obtained show that when the outliers are included in the analysis [a] stress is a significant predictor of creativity, [b] indirect only mediation occurs when depression mediates the stress-creativity relationship, [c] while anxiety is an insignificant mediator in the analysis. Additionally, the results indicated that when the outliers are excluded from the analysis [a] stress is not a significant predictor of creativity, [b] indirect only mediation occurs when depression mediates the stress-creativity relationship, [c] while anxiety is an insignificant mediator in the analysis.

Conclusion: Further research should assess and explore the relationship between stress and creativity by taking into consideration mediators or moderators, which may explain the relationship between stress and creativity in more terms that are dignified.