Robin Williams, depression and the complex causes of suicide

While many people who kill themselves have been experiencing the extreme distress we might think of as depression, that’s not always the case and is rarely the whole explanation. 

This article originally appeared on the Guardian Science Website on the 18th of August 2014 and is reproduced here with permission.

Anne Cooke, Angela Gilchrist and John McGowan

Photo: Eva Rinaldi

As the tributes to the actor and comedian Robin Williams continue, so too do the arguments over the meaning of his death. Suicide is a profound act that touches many, and it would be surprising if it didn’t raise strong feelings. On the one hand we have Shep Smith of Fox News calling Williams a “coward” (he has since apologised). On the other we have a range of articles defending the star, usually along the lines of “don’t blame the guy – he had a mental illness.”

Most of the coverage has encouraged us to see his anguish as a symptom of a sickness as real and biologically based as measles or a broken leg. Just like those afflictions, we’re told, depression can strike anyone out of the blue. A piece by Guardian science blogger Dean Burnett offered a variation on this theme, asserting that depression is an illness and attacking any suggestion that suicidal acts might involve anything but desperation and a wish to escape. While we’re sure that the piece was written with the intention of defending someone in pain, we worry that it contains ways of thinking about mental health that oversimplify complex issues and can be unhelpful.

It's Brave but is it Helpful?

Angela Gilchrist

Fighting Stigma or Frightening Stuff?
Photo: Christian Payne

When a celebrity like Stephen Fry can publicly admit that he's recently attempted suicide and others like Catherine Zeta-Jones announce they're checking into a clinic for maintenance of a bipolar disorder, it would be tempting to believe that we've reached a new point in the acceptance of mental illness.

Certainly, people are more open than they have ever been about mental distress. Celebrity accounts fill the tabloids and the internet abounds with stories from those either in the midst of recovery or resigned to a lifetime of psychiatric input. Films have leading characters with bipolar, MP's have discussed their mental health woes, and we’ve made it illegal to discriminate on mental health grounds. These are signs that we're beginning to understand mental ill-health as just another form of distress. Given all this evidence, you could be forgiven for thinking that the stigma of mental illness is a thing of the past. The reality though, sometimes seems very different.

We Can’t Let Maggie Go

John McGowan

Feelings about Maggie fade slowly
Picture:  Trevor Rickard 

Like many middle-aged Brits I came to political sentience chanting, ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie...’ followed by some general abuse inviting Mrs Thatcher’s exit. It was all so easy. Hating the Tories in general, and Mrs T’s economic brutality in particular, was as natural as breathing. For all the economic and social divisions, 1980s Britain was a straightforward place to grow up.

Mrs Thatcher having gone is one of those life-marking moments. Like when your parents would say, ‘Of course you’re too young to understand’ and find someone who remembered the charts before the Beatles. I need to talk to someone who actually remembers the ‘no such thing as society’ quote, the declaration that Nelson Mandela was a ‘terrorist’ or that some people thought Michael Foot would be a credible prime minister. I think I’m looking for some sort of grounding in the face of the incredible passions the Iron Lady still arouses. The nation is again split from top to bottom,or possibly between top and bottom, and the spirit of ‘83 roams the land. Was she really so bad though, I ask my friends? Most of them think it she was worse. Despite this plenty of my Thatch-hating mates operate small businesses, pay Rupert Murdoch for Sky TV, and live happily in a world created in the laissez-faire 80s rather than the socialist 70s. A little inconsistent perhaps? Maybe instead it’s that an overwhelming focus on Mrs T’s personality and her triumphs or sins glosses the possibility that the 80s weren’t so straightforward after all.

Gazza, Lance and the difficulties of psychiatric diagnosis

John McGowan

What do you call someone who tells lies persistently? In recent weeks the answer is probably Chris Huhne, the latest in a line of hubristic politicians who have told a stream of big porkies to cover up a small one. You may have already forgotten that before the erstwhile next leader of the Lib Dems bowed out, the deceiver du jour was cycling champ (technically ex-champ) Lance Armstrong. I've written about the ethics of Armstrong’s fall from grace elsewhere, suggesting that, while his doping to win the Tour de France wasn't great, his unpopularity has far more to do with his deceit and with our disappointed expectations of a previously heroic figure.

Pinocchio. Worrying signs of psychopathy
in childhood! Picture:  Ropa-To.

However, what should we call him? Is he a ‘jerk’ (his own suggestion), or one of many more colourful names suggested on various comment threads of the web? As well as the stream of abuse, some of Lance’s ex-fans also seem eager to offer a more nuanced appraisal in the form of psychiatric labels. Is he a psychopath or a sociopath or, as an article in the Atlantic a couple of weeks back suggested, an ‘aggressive narcissist’? What, I wonder, do these labels tell us about him that conventional monikers do not?