Superior IQs associated with mental and physical disorders, research suggests
It's unclear to me that they've controlled for "people who join Mensa."<p>To be clear, I'm not throwing shade, and I was a member for awhile before I got sick of paying dues, getting spammed, and not going to meetings. They're a fine organization, spam aside.<p>But in general, people who join clubs based on personal qualities do so because they put some level of value and identity in that quality. <i>Some</i> people who tend that way do so because they have an emotional hole to fill, and <i>some</i> people who tend that way do so because it's their dominant positive quality (in their own perception).<p>So, neither of those speak to Mensa's core message of joining so you have people as smart as you to converse with. But both of those suggest a higher potential for Mensa members in general to have life issues they're compensating for by joining intelligence clubs.<p>I do believe the basic trend that very smart people have more mental disorders, at least. I think our knowledge of twice-exceptional people has grown a lot over time, and I think there's plenty of anecdotal evidence that quirks come with the intelligence territory. Get quirky enough and a quirk is a diagnosis. But I'm not convinced that particular skew starts at the 95% percentile.