IMO There are three kinds of depression 1. REAL CLINICAL CHEMICAL DEPRESSION 2. Average everyday lows and and highs of life 3. Emo self pitying crap The reality is that we cannot tell the difference sometimes We cannot assume either So we tend to treat all three like #1 Which IMO can cause more damage than good i.e. putting someone on drugs that is just having a rough patch may disrupt what would otherwise be health brain chemistry. With anything I say be careful and move at a slow pace and be certain before taking on meds I prefer the non pharmaceutical option Primarily because i think we are becoming overly medicated. As for Selfishness. . . . . it is what it is they did something FOR THEMSELVES. Trying to frame it as anything else . . . just to try a better connotation or a Euphemism for it .. .ls just weak There are times one should be selfish . . . doesn't mean it is an automatic negative don't give into the wordgames Rocket River
Maybe because a lot of people don't treat it with the sensitivity that we would when someone gets a cancer diagnosis or something like crohn's disease. We often treat depression more like a choice or a bad decision or a flaw, almost like a venereal disease. That's what you get if you stuck your mind all up in that dark, nasty way of thinking. So if people feel like they are suffering it more like they would a congenital disease, they'll get mad if they hear people blaming them. Just my two cents. I've been very, very lucky that I've never been depressed. Blue, yes. Ups and downs, but not depression.
Like Rocket River said above, in that moment it is pretty tough to distinguish between ups&downs/blues/depression. This is what softens the subject for many and makes people take it less seriously; a seemingly depressed person may just be going through a bad patch and need to put in the work to pull themselves out of it. Chemical imbalance based depression probably needs a different name to be properly considered. This is a fundamental point that helps me out of the blues. I'm quite sure I don't have clinical depression but I do feel down often and tend to remain down for prolonged periods. This concept has recently helped me re-evaluate myself and convinced me to change certain habits, diet, and thought process that overall are starting to contribute to a more moderate state of mind.
The article I read claimed he had 2 divorces to support totaling around 10 million a year. His latest show got cancelled after the first season and he started the process of selling his 28 million dollar ranch. It seemed to paint a picture of money getting tighter and his career not getting the draw he was used to. Pretty sad if those circumstances hit him that hard. Can't say I'd know how I'd react after reaching such heights and feeling like you're in a freefall. Though thinking about it more, my dad passed away around the same age. At that stage in life, you're more prone to be forced with confronting your own mortality. And one last thought, calling a suicide victim a coward is just as selfish as one is denouncing it to the same effect. Well...selfish or self-centered depending on how well you know the person.
You just mentioned some reasons why he was hit that hard, and how he dealt with blows to his acting career. I think taking the easy way out fits into this definition of coward completely. Face your responsibilities. Eat the sour grapes just like you would the sweet ones when picked more from the vine than you could handle. Pass through the struggle and know that there's better ahead for you. Don't take the easy way out.
I definitely don't think it's anywhere close to as cut and dry as Swoly is making it, but I also have a hard time wrapping my head around what seems to be the majority opinion in this thread that suicide is just an unfortunate inevitability that deserves no judgement. If there's no judgement for making a decision to take your own life and leave your family behind in mourning, then maybe you can't really judge anyone for any decision they make. It's all just a result of the hand they were dealt.
There seems to be a lot of speculation about whether finances were involved but then his own assistant basically came out and dispelled the notion of his financial situation having anything to do with it saying he was fine financially (albeit, yes, he was selling his ranch to cut out some expenses). Also, look at the trusts that were already in place for his children. He had money. So, if his own assistant says that, then she's probably the closest to him aside from his own wife. It's hard to discount what she says. I think a more probable factor at this point is the affects of both addiction and heart surgery on his brain. CNN interviewed a doctor who presented an interesting display of brain scans for both addicts and patients who underwent heart surgery. The before/after affects of each on the brain were quite startling compared to a normal brain. If you overlay the two scans (which would be applicable to Robin), then you have a brain that was nowhere near normal regarding blood flow in the brain. The scan reveals these issues where it looks like Swiss cheese. I was shocked. Given that, I think his heart surgery made his mental situation way worse after. I can only imagine how his brain was processing his thoughts internally given those scans I saw. At this point, even though whomever is saying it was financial, I'm not really buying that as the reason any longer. This was a man who didn't have a properly working brain that got worse as he was aging and after that heart surgery. But, maybe the autopsy can prove that conclusively? I also think he was actually in denial about being bi-polar based on his encounters with Carrie Fisher and conversations that he had. He had many of the symptoms but told her he didn't think he had it. Some of his rambling thought comedic performances where he is super energized and is just all over the place kind of say otherwise. That cocaine use he did in the 80s...I'm sure that wasn't a line here or there. Add in the alcohol. I think he really messed himself up during that period. Yes, he was clean for 20 years but the damage was probably done way back then and started presenting itself more as he aged. The relapses didn't help. But, who knows if we will ever know for sure. If the autopsy doesn't shed any new info, then we may never know and it's all speculation.
It's not cut and dry, I understand, but... they're not "dealt" a hand... they look for it themselves through acts and occurrences in their own lives. Look back into that post I quoted... he didn't need to have such an expensive house to then later not be able to pay for it or lose it in a divorce, and having the show cut should just be a failure that should make him and the rest of his team more successful.
Well, I don't blame you, and I wouldn't try to wrap my head around that because... nobody is saying that. It's a straw man version of one version of the reactions. What the more sympathetic among us are saying is we can't know the individual person's demons, and we haven't walked in their shoes. We're more into understanding what happened than judging it harshly and absolutely. That doesn't mean "deserves no judgment." To be frank, I would only say an individual's suicide doesn't deserve ignorant, simplistic and absolutist judgment. That's my opinion. I generally don't think one-size-fits-all versions of evaluating human behavior are very helpful. Invisiblefan, great post up there. Still a thoughtful and interesting thread, but we'll see how long it lasts.
This x1000. I created the thread not to pass judgment or "absolve" of judgment of Robin Williams' or any others' suicide. I just wanted to fight the toxic attitude of condemning people with real clinical depression and have empathy towards them.
I think that those who describe Robin's ultimate reaction to his illness as "selfish," etc., are making the mistake of applying their own ideas of dealing with depression when they are depressed, when they don't have the condition. Normal depression, what most of us confront from time to time, or even confront often, is not remotely similar to what those with Robin Williams' condition deal with every day of their lives after its onset, which often doesn't hit you hard until you are an adult. It may sound trite, but one honestly needs to either walk in their shoes, or be close to someone who has had to deal with this condition for years and sometimes, like Robin, for decades, to truly begin to understand it. An old friend who is bi-polar that I mentioned in the other thread has 3 daughters and is divorced. The youngest one recently graduated from college, and you would think he'd view that as cause for celebration, but because of a dustup among the daughters and the ex-wife that he stuck his nose into, trying to be a long distance mediator (they live in the Northeast), my friend has convinced himself that they no longer love him. He took a relatively minor family dispute and blew it up in his head that all 3 daughters now hate him! That's absurd. I've known him well over 30 years, and the daughters all their lives, and it's absolutely the sort of quarrel that blows over. Yet in his head, he's pondering suicide because the daughters are who he loves more than anything else in this life. I spent hours recently, having driven down to Houston in large part because a phone conversation got me worried about him, telling him that, and it was like talking to a brick wall. Rational? Of course not, but this is a highly fuctional human being. He's a Harvard graduate, someone who comfortably operates in the upper reaches of high finance, yet because of this disease, can be very irrational if he isn't taking his meds, and he really, really dislikes taking his meds, and for good reason. While it deals to a great extent with the depression, it also makes him feel like a "different person." He's a very creative, dynamic guy, but while on his meds, a large part of that person, the real person, sans medication, goes away. He doesn't see the option of suicide as a selfish act. He views it as sparing his family from having to deal with him. They frequently rationalize it that way. Suicide is seen as an act that both ends the suffering brought on by their inner demons, and ends what they see as suffering by family and friends brought on by those same people dealing with him having his condition. And they, my friend and I suspect Robin Williams, are very, very aware of their condition. There is nothing simple about this disease. There are no easy roads to take. Applying the ups and downs of your life to theirs is a serious mistake. I'm hoping that there will be advances in dealing with the disease, because it is more common than some might believe.
You don't deal with the problems or issues affecting you to stress or to suffer the depression you say you're having, so you just "walk away from them" or "brush them under a rug." It's easy to believe that if you're not here, your problems (albeit ironically not just YOUR problems) will go away. You leave all those for the people still alive. Not "easy" in the sense of the technical aspect of how to kill yourself (shooting, hanging, asphyxiating, plunging off something), but... in that it ends it all QUICK for you. I'm trying to figure out why people don't just ask for help in dealing with the situation that makes them depressed. So your large debt makes you think "if I die, it won't have to be paid." But that's not fair to the company to which you owe the money.
