The researchers, and the reporters, missed a glaring problem with the inference: Perhaps the increased prevalence of the examined disorders is due to Mensa membership, not high intelligence.
Maybe people with high intelligence are just fine. Maybe the need to have some certification of this attribute, or to let others know about it is correlated with the disorders being attributed to high intelligence.
This isn't the first time I've seen someone use MENSA as a synonym for "the population of intelligent people".
Personally I think it makes perfect sense that MENSA members have a higher tendency toward mood disorders; they're literally just the people who think they're so much smarter than everyone else that they formed an ego-stroking club for themselves. How could you even consider joining such a group without first having a disorder of some kind? It's a prerequisite.
> It’s also possible that people who join Mensa differ from other people in ways other than just IQ. For example, people preoccupied with intellectual pursuits may spend less time than the average person on physical exercise and social interaction, both of which have been shown to have broad benefits for psychological and physical health.
But they dropped the ball between those two sentences in my opinion.
Maybe people with high intelligence are just fine. Maybe the need to have some certification of this attribute, or to let others know about it is correlated with the disorders being attributed to high intelligence.