Thursday, August 14, 2014

On Robin Williams: Depression and Suicide

There are many different kinds of depression. To speak as though depression is a single clinical entity is to mislead.

If, for example, a psychotic is suffering from depression, he is not be held accountable for his actions. If he has s command hallucination telling him to jump off of a cliff we would not consider his suicide to be his own choice.

Such is the exception and exceptions do not make the rule. Most people who are depressed are not psychotic. Thus, they do retain a measure of moral agency.

Blogger Matt Walsh provoked a firestorm of critical commentary by suggesting that, while depression is an illness, suicide is an act.

In his words:

Your suicide doesn’t happen to you; it doesn’t attack you like cancer or descend upon you like a tornado. It is a decision made by an individual….

No matter how depressed you are, you never have to make that choice. That choice. Whether you call depression a disease or not, please don’t make the mistake of saying that someone who commits suicide “died from depression.” No, he died from his choice. He died by his own hand. Depression will not appear on the autopsy report, because it can’t kill you on its own. It needs you to pull the trigger, take the pills, or hang the rope. To act like death by suicide is exactly analogous to death by malaria or heart failure is to steal hope from the suicidal person. 

In effect, Walsh is asserting that human beings have free will. To tell people that suicide is not a choice, but an inevitable consequence of a biochemical imbalance deprives them of hope.

If suicide is a choice, then you retain the option not to choose it. If it is not a choice, then you lose that option.

In point of fact, treating one's depression is also a choice. Unless the individual is subject to involuntary commitment he does have the freedom to choose whether to take his medication, to do his exercise and or to perform the cognitively-based homework exercises.

Walsh is trying to persuade people who have a choice not to commit suicide. He begins by claiming that all suicides are egotistical. They are self-serving, presumably to end psychic pain, but hurting other people:

In suicide you obliterate yourself and shackle your loved ones with guilt and grief. There is no freedom in it. There is no peace. How can I free myself by attempting to annihilate myself? How can I free something by destroying it? Chesterton said, “The man who kills a man, kills a man. The man who kills himself, kills all men; as far as he is concerned he wipes out the world.” Where is the freedom in that?

True enough, some suicides feel markedly egotistical. An individual who takes a step back and considers the impact his action will have on other people might well be less likely to commit suicide.

Unless of course he does it because he wants to hurt other people, as an act of revenge, for example.

We should not however dismiss the possibility that some individuals will make better decisions if they consider the effect their action will have on others.

I used the term egotistical because Walsh’s post reminded me of the great sociological study of suicide, written over a century ago by French sociologist Emile Durkheim.

Some suicides are egotistical, Durkheim posited, but others might be caused by altruism or anomie.

People who commit suicide for altruistic motives and sacrificing themselves to serve the betterment of others, whether the group or the family.

The military commander who leads his troops into a losing battle might fall on his sword, as they say, out of shame for his failure and because he does not want his soldiers to believe that they are responsible for their defeat.

I was reminded of this last night when Wall Street Journal reporter Lee Hawkins suggested that, financially speaking, Robin Williams might have been worth more dead than alive.

It was the case, Hawkins said, with Michael Jackson.

If Williams had financial difficulties—point that many have questioned-- his duty to provide for his family might have led him to imagine that he could best do it by committing suicide.

A disagreeable thought, but, if Durkheim is correct, then some people have altruistic motives for committing suicide.

A suicide based on anomie is yet another story.

If egotistical suicide is an attempt to hurt other people and altruistic suicide is an effort to help other people, with anomie the person is suicidal because he does not connect with other people.

Within this context examine the comment that many people made about Robin Williams, that he was always on, that he was always performing, that he could never turn it off.

People who met him in private settings were delighted to be entertained by one of the world’s greatest comic geniuses, but still when you are telling jokes you are not connecting with other people. You are on stage, in the spotlight, provoking laughter and pleasure in your audience… but you are still… alone.

There are no social niceties, no exchange of simple information, no schmoozing… no real connection.

Of course, people love you. They love you for making them laugh. And yet, they do not know you. They do not even care to know you. They are just waiting to hear another joke.

Perhaps Williams was bipolar, subject to mood swings between being a hypomanic entertainer and feeling alone and isolated.

And yet, bipolar illness is treatable, as are other forms of depression. And Williams, we know, had access to all of the best medical treatment.

Some have asked how it could happen that the psychiatrists did not succeed in treating him. Others have responded that the psychiatrists did well to help him to live as long as he lived.

Surely, medication can have a beneficial effect on the brain chemistry of someone who is depressed. And yet, feeling good while being disconnected might have a limited effectiveness. Being on medication might help you to make new friends, but, making friends is a skill. It is not the same skill as entertaining large groups of people.

How does a comic move from telling jokes, activity for which he is lionized, to chit chat?




10 comments:

  1. Is suicide 'egotistical' and hurt others?

    As so many people now live alone and have no family, who will they hurt if they kill themselves?

    "Perhaps Williams was bipolar, subject to mood swings between being a hypomanic entertainer and feeling alone and isolated. And yet, bipolar illness is treatable, as are other forms of depression. And Williams, we know, had access to all of the best medical treatment."

    But if Williams treated his depression effectively, he would not have been Williams. He needed extreme emotional volatility to be what he became famous for.

    He could be bipolar and 'authentic'(true to himself) OR he could be treated and ordinary/generic.

    He couldn't be treated and remain authentic.

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  2. In one of Robin Williams movie there is a quote that speaks volumes.


    " I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is ending up with people who make you feel all alone"

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  3. re: "An individual who takes a step back and considers the impact his action will have on other people might well be less likely to commit suicide."

    I agree this is the most compelling reason against suicide. And certainly its a reason against a violent suicide like with a gunshot to the head, knowing someone else is going to have to clean up the mess you leave behind.

    I recall another movie with Williams, "What dreams may come", where he dies in an accident and his bereaved wife kills herself, but becomes stuck in a purgatory/hell, and Williams tries to retrieve her soul, but unable to reach her.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Dreams_May_Come_(film)

    I admit this mythic version of hell is most credible to me, if we can become caught in false beliefs in our life on earth, it is possible our "confusion" will pass with us to the afterlife, and "eternal peace" may not be if we didn't "do our work" in life, and took shortcuts of despair to avoid responsibility.

    I don't know if Williams was religious. I don't know if atheists have an easier path to ending their life, feeling "safe" their suffering really will come to an end. But even an agnostic like me wonder what I don't know, and so, not knowing what an afterlife might hold, I'd figure it was my duty to not find out too soon, as long as there's more to learn in this life.

    I do think thoughts about suicide are a way to challenge egotism, that is, the ego almost exists for survival, so once you are willing to surrender your life, you're admitting the story your ego has been telling you isn't enough any more. And that opens the possibility that the truth of your life can be asked, and maybe its not too late to face some of the ugly truths, and change something.

    I've been listening to some Jordan Peterson lectures this year and copied his quote on redemption. To sacrifice what is no longer useful, that's a sort of ego suicide, and when you can find that surrender, the world of possibilities can open up again.

    I wonder if Robins Williams needed redemption, and a sort that fame and fortune could not compensate for.

    "To be redeemed is to aim at the highest value, to sacrifice what is no longer useful and valid in yourself, and to tell the truth. And the consequence of that is existence in a deep state of meaning that justifies the tragedy of being, and the possibility of transforming your own life in the most beneficial positive direction while simultaneously doing that for the people around you." - Jordan Peterson

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  4. I think you point here is very revealing: "when you are telling jokes you are not connecting with other people. You are on stage, in the spotlight, provoking laughter and pleasure in your audience… but you are still… alone.
    There are no social niceties, no exchange of simple information, no schmoozing… no real connection." Based on the what I have heard from people who have met Robin Williams, I think this is the way he was. I think it is also true for a lot of teachers, not just comedians. It's also me. People tell me I am too shy, and I suppose I am. I go to the local senior center, not to mingle, but only to give lectures, and I'm not making friends doing it.

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  5. Affluent people commit suicide more than v poor people. Pretty sure about that. I don't know why. -- Rich Lara

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  7. That, and the comments, was a humane and enlightened discussion of self-slaughter. Being anonymous here, I will share this:

    When I was broken, anyone can be broken, I contemplated it and realized: at the moment of suicide, you are both victim and murderer. Are you a victim? Are you a murderer? No! and No!

    I saw myself from outside myself for an instant: "Would you shoot this man because he hurts? Because he is broken, lonely, and afraid? Is that why you would shoot him?"

    Never. I would help that man even if he were myself! And I have. And I continue to help that man get better whether he thinks he deserves it or not. He's doing pretty good now. That worked for me.

    --Gray

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  8. If only we could see ourselves form outside just at that instant:

    "This man is lonely and depressed, worth more to people dead... Look, he's hurt: let's torture and hang him!"

    None of us, I trust, would ever think that, let alone do it!

    Once I saw that, I felt like I was innoculated against that thought, that virus, of self-slaughter.

    I wish others could glimpse that at feel it at that moment.

    --Gray

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  9. Suicide is self-destruction in an age when the self is all-important. Go figure that one out...

    Tip

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  10. "making friends is a skill. It is not the same skill as entertaining large groups of people."

    Actually, the initial stage of making friends is pretty much the same as entertaining. And it remains an ongoing element in most relationships.

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