Robin Williams in Patch Adams
The outpouring of well-wishing and soul-baring around the suicide of Robin Williams is at once outrageously sad and refreshingly honest. I am reminded that mental illness is no respecter of success or wealth, faith or culture, personality type or background. Mental illness is undeniably complex, lurking as it does in its shades of greys and neutrals, affected by a multitude of variables...as is cancer and heart disease and our own individual reactions to the common cold viruses. But why are we so affected by this one man's death? Is it that so many of us can empathize with deep feelings of frustration and hopelessness and self-questioning and a dank, heavy oppression that cannot be banished by logic or positive thinking or fervent prayer? Or is it that we find it shocking that someone whom we associate with a certain picture of happiness - exceedingly intelligent, popular, wealthy, hilarious - still finds no reason strong enough to motivate their existence?
One of the devastating things for the sufferer of mental illness is the disintegrating effect it has on their personality. It's difficult to face the world - especially when you are known by a lot of people in the world - when your own personhood and image feels fractured and shattered. To be a talented actor who can portray other people with depth and humour and accuracy, yet not to be able to know what your own self looks like without this blanketing and mind-numbing depression, must be unspeakably terrible.
We are collectively sad because we realise that the confident and funny persona presented by Robin Williams was not the whole person; we are disappointed that someone was not as happy and buoyant as they appeared, and yet they could apparently hide it so well. To think that the man who acted a medical student who acted a clown to develop a new relational way of interacting with patients with mental health problems could not 'act his way out' of his own psychological morbidity, is distressing. We like to think that if we have insight into our state of mind that we can therefore overcome it. The sensation of loss of control of one's feelings and loss of integrity of one's personality, is something that can be the driver for a person to make a decisive, controlling, terminal action.
Suicide is not artistic or romantic or a freeing action. It is an action signalling a final sense of defeat of the human spirit. There is much to be said about the neurobiochemistry that is affecting someone's decision-making ability in the depths of depressive illness...but it is nothing less than deeply sad that all of us could potentially come to that point where our own judgement and insight are so severely affected by illness and circumstances that perspective is lost.
Remember that your family and friends and patients and strangers with mental illness may be uncomfortable in their own skin as part of their illness. Many have lost, and some will have forgotten, who they were or who they could have been, when their lives were not overshadowed by depression or anxiety or delusional thinking.
May you find the right path in the most unlikely place.
Check out the work of the real Patch Adams at the Gesundheit! Institute http://patchadams.org/mission
One of the devastating things for the sufferer of mental illness is the disintegrating effect it has on their personality. It's difficult to face the world - especially when you are known by a lot of people in the world - when your own personhood and image feels fractured and shattered. To be a talented actor who can portray other people with depth and humour and accuracy, yet not to be able to know what your own self looks like without this blanketing and mind-numbing depression, must be unspeakably terrible.
We are collectively sad because we realise that the confident and funny persona presented by Robin Williams was not the whole person; we are disappointed that someone was not as happy and buoyant as they appeared, and yet they could apparently hide it so well. To think that the man who acted a medical student who acted a clown to develop a new relational way of interacting with patients with mental health problems could not 'act his way out' of his own psychological morbidity, is distressing. We like to think that if we have insight into our state of mind that we can therefore overcome it. The sensation of loss of control of one's feelings and loss of integrity of one's personality, is something that can be the driver for a person to make a decisive, controlling, terminal action.
Suicide is not artistic or romantic or a freeing action. It is an action signalling a final sense of defeat of the human spirit. There is much to be said about the neurobiochemistry that is affecting someone's decision-making ability in the depths of depressive illness...but it is nothing less than deeply sad that all of us could potentially come to that point where our own judgement and insight are so severely affected by illness and circumstances that perspective is lost.
Remember that your family and friends and patients and strangers with mental illness may be uncomfortable in their own skin as part of their illness. Many have lost, and some will have forgotten, who they were or who they could have been, when their lives were not overshadowed by depression or anxiety or delusional thinking.
May you find the right path in the most unlikely place.
Check out the work of the real Patch Adams at the Gesundheit! Institute http://patchadams.org/mission
Yes.
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