Is This the Edinburgh Fringe, or a Wellness Convention?

As I made my way to Scotland for this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the three-week arts showcase that finished on Monday, I felt a little apprehensive. A conspicuous number of shows were themed around psychological maladies. These included plays about grief, anxiety, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder and gambling addiction. I had thought I was going to a festival, but this sounded more like a wellness convention.

Theater geared toward raising awareness can often be underwhelming, because the message gets in the way of a good time. But “300 Paintings,” by the Australian performer Sam Kissajukian, was a pleasing exception. Kissajukian, who has bipolar disorder, quit comedy a couple of years ago, when he was in his mid-30s, to become an artist — a frying-pan-to-fire trajectory if ever there was one.

In this one-man show, he recounts, with the help of a slide show, a six-month manic streak during which he fast-tracked his way onto the art circuit through prolific productivity and business chutzpah: the delusional confidence of the unwell. Then he crashed, sought psychiatric help and got diagnosed. Kissajukian’s monologue is a whimsical delight, and the paintings aren’t bad either.

Grief narratives have been much in vogue onstage since the success of “Fleabag,” which was performed at the Fringe in 2013. “So Young,” a sentimental comedy written by the Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell, was one of several shows about bereavement at this year’s festival.

Set in Glasgow, it centers on the conflict between two grieving people: a middle-aged widower who has just found a new, much younger girlfriend; and his dead wife’s best friend, who is affronted at how quickly he has moved on. The play foregrounds an often overlooked truth: that grief, though primarily personal, has an inherently social dimension.