Menachem Begin, 1913-1992 Prime Minister of Israel, depression. September, 1983 Begin resigned the premiership in deep depression over the death of his wife, and also, Mr. Silver leads us to suspect, over the consequences of the war he waged in Lebanon, and because of a deeply ingrained tendency to manic-depressiveness
Brendan Behan, 1923-1964 poet, addiction. Behan found fame difficult. He had long been a heavy drinker (describing himself, on one occasion, as "a drinker with a writing problem" and claiming "I only drink on two occasions-when I'm thirsty and when I'm not") and developed diabetes in the early 1960s. As his fame grew, so too did his alcohol consumption. This combination resulted in a series of notoriously drunken public appearances, on both stage and television. Brendan saw that it paid him to be drunk, as the public wanted the witty, iconoclastic, genial "broth of a boy" and he gave it to them in abundance. He staggered through the drunken hoops held out to him exclaiming: "There's no bad publicity except an obituary." His health suffered terribly, with diabetic comas and seizures occurring with frightening regularity. Towards the end he became the caricature of the drunken Irishman. He died, aged 41.Irving Berlin, 1888-1989 Russian born musician, "White Christmas" and "God Bless America", clinical depression. Berlin had a bout of depression at 40, Barrett said, when his infant son died and he was writing songs he thought were terrible. Two of them, "How Deep Is the Ocean" and "Say It Isn't So," proved better than he first thought. Another depression hit him at 60; he came out of that by writing "Call Me Madam" for Broadway.
Hector Berlioz, 1803-1869 French composer, Symphonic Fantastique, depression. Berlioz was a very introverted, rather neurotic young man; later in life he was to become mentally unstable. His last few years became increasingly dull and miserable, he felt very lonely and fed up, amounting at times to a state of depression, increased by more frequent bouts of abdominal pain. A dark spot was the death of Louis his son in Havana from yellow fever at the age of only 33. After increasing weakness and depression, he finally died on the 8th March 1869 in Paris aged 66.Kurt Cobain, 1967-1994 Rock star, addiction, clinical depression, suicide. Throughout most of his life, Cobain battled depression, chronic bronchitis, and intense physical pain due to a chronic stomach condition. The latter wreaked an especially debilitating toll on his emotional welfare, and he spent years trying to find its source. However, none of the doctors he consulted were able to pinpoint the specific cause, guessing that it was either a result of Cobain's childhood scoliosis or related to the stresses of performing. Feeling that he had been let down by medical science, Cobain opted to self-medicate with heroin. Cobain's heroin addiction increased further as the years progressed. Cobain made his first attempt at rehab in early 1992, not long after he and Love discovered they were going to become parents. Immediately after leaving rehab, Nirvana embarked on their Australian tour, with Cobain appearing pale and gaunt while suffering through withdrawals. Not long after returning home, Cobain's addiction resurfaced. On April 8, 1994, Cobain's body was discovered in the spare room above the garage (referred to as "the greenhouse") at his Lake Washington home by Veca Electric employee Gary Smith. Smith arrived at the house that morning to install security lighting and saw the body lying inside. Apart from a minor amount of blood coming out of Cobain's ear, Smith reported seeing no visible signs of trauma, and initially believed that Cobain was asleep. Smith found what he thought might be a suicide note with a pen stuck through it beneath an overturned flowerpot. A shotgun, purchased for Cobain by Dylan Carlson, was found at Cobain's side. An autopsy report later concluded Cobain's death as a result of a "self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head." The report estimates Cobain to have died on April 5, 1994.
Thomas Eagleton, 1929-2007 lawyer, former US Senator, ECT, Between 1960 and 1966, Eagleton checked himself into the hospital three times for physical and nervous exhaustion, receiving electric shock treatments twice.
Thomas Eakins, 1844-1916 American artist, bipolar. He suffered from a sense of failure, bouts of depression and conflicted feelings about his attraction to men.
Thomas Edison, 1847-1931 American inventor, bipolar.
Edward Elgar, 1857-1934 English composer,depression. He suffered chronically from depression and self-doubt and often needed encouragement from his wife Alice, and from his musical friends such as his close confidante and supporter August Jaeger
TS Eliot, 1888-1965 American poet, breakdown, depression. In 1921, the business negotiations to finance the proposed journal had to be suspended when Eliot suffered a nervous breakdown; it was during his convalescence from this illness that he wrote The Waste Land. Though the breakdown had much to do with marital misery, it also reflects something of the postwar cultural crisis of which The Waste Land is itself symptomatic. The second depression of spirits gripped Eliot in October 1938, in the wake of the Munich pact between Hitler and Chamberlain. Three months later, the Criterion folded – partly because of the material complications of the advent of war, but no doubt because of its spiritual implications, too.
Roky Erickson, 1947- American Rocker, Addiction, ECT. Roky Erickson is an American singer, songwriter, harmonica player and guitarist from Texas. He was a founding member of the 13th Floor Elevators and pioneer of the psychedelic rock genre. Erickson is one of rock and roll's most famous cult figures, Unfortunately, Roky's struggles with drug abuse and mental illness took a serious toll. His 1969 arrest in Texas for possession of a single marijuana cigarette led to his being committed for three years to Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was reportedly subjected to Thorazine, electroshock therapy, and other experimental treatments. Most agree he was never the same after his release. Roky has had prolific periods of creativity in the intervening years, but unscrupulous managers and record label executives often took advantage of his condition, leaving Roky to live in poverty while others profit from his music.Frances Farmer, 1913-1970 American actress, addiction, ECT, Farmer’s mother attributed her rebellion to mental illness and had her committed to a state hospital in Washington. When she was released a few years later, her mother was not satisfied with her rehabilitation and had her committed again in 1945. For the next five years, Farmer lived a hellish existence. Resisting her imprisonment every step of the way, she endured rape, humiliation, shock therapy and hydrotherapy. Before her release, she also presumably underwent a trans-orbital lobotomy.
William Faulkner, 1897-1962 American writer, addiction. Faulkner's physique and mental functioning was weakened by hard drinking. "When I have one martini I feel bigger, wiser, taller," he confessed. "When I have a second I feel superlative. After that there's no holding me." Besides problems with alcohol his wife's drug addiction and declining health shadowed his life. "I will always believe that my first responsibility is to the artist, the work," he wrote in a letter; "it is terrible that my wife does not realise or at least accept that." Their daughter Jill later said that "Nothing about the marriage was right."
Jules Feiffer, 1929 American cartoonist and satirist for the New Yorker and the Village Voice, depression.
Sally Field 1946-American actress, eating disorders, depression. Throughout a Hollywood career that’s spanned more than four decades, this child of an abusive stepdad has been harshly criticized for her looks; battled depression, weight gain and eating disorders; survived two failed marriages; and lost countless jobs to “sexier” stars. “It’s never been easy,” says Sally, widely considered one of the best actresses of her generation. “It’s always been a struggle.” “I had terrible self-loathing,” she has recalled. “I mean, yikes, here it was 1967, everybody’s dropping acid, eating granola and running around naked, and I’m doing The Flying Nun.” That was when the food problems began. Sally would spend weeks eating nothing but cucumbers. Then, on weekends, she’d scarf an entire cake or pot of spaghetti in a sitting. “There were nights I was alone in my apartment wishing someone could teach me how to throw up because I was in such pain.”
Peter Gabriel, 1950- rock star, Gabriel himself struggled with depression through his 40s and had several years of therapy. "The break-up of my marriage was the most major grieving I've done in my life,"
Liam Gallagher, 1972- English singer, Agoraphobia. "I’d rather be out, except I can’t even do that at the moment. I get agoraphobia sometimes when I’m out. "Like, I went to Oxford Street the other day to buy a suit and I got the fear. I was surrounded by people asking me for things so I sacked the suit and jumped in a cab and nailed the doors down. It’s bad, man."
Judy Garland, 1922-1969 singer, actress. She fell prey to depression, suffered a nervous breakdown and slipped from the public eye, except for a few recording sessions. In 1956 she did the album "Judy", and in 1957, "Alone" and stayed away from the show business spotlight for the remainder of the decade. On June 22, 1969 she was found dead in her London apartment, apparently of an accidental overdose of barbiturates and alcohol. The roller coaster life of a legend had prematurely ended.
James Garner, 1928- actor, depression
Paul Gascoigne, 1967- athlete (soccer), addiction, sectioned under the mental health act
Paul Gauguin, 1848-1903 artist, bipolar
Harold Geneen, 1910-1997 executive, ITT Industries,
King George III of England, 1738-1820 The Madness of King George is a 1994 film directed by Nicholas Hytner and adapted by Alan Bennettplay The Madness of George III. It tells the true story of George III's deteriorating mental health, and his equally declining relationship with his son, the Prince of Wales, particularly focusing on the period around the Regency Crisis of 1788. Modern medicine has suggested that the King's symptoms were the result of porphyria
Stan Getz, 1927-1991 musician, Stan Getz had major depressive episodes and was hospitalised at times.
Kaye Gibbons, 1960- writer, Because of manic depression, Kaye Gibbons once tried to set free a handful of snakeskin belts in a department store. She sat on her front lawn in December and waved to passing traffic. She imagined she spotted Eric Clapton, Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart under a circus tent on the beach. Equilibrium buoys her for a few weeks before the roller coaster of manic peaks and depressive valleys jerks into motion again. But if scientists offered Gibbons a cure today, she might refuse. Because she could lose her art in the bargain. "Things could be much worse," Gibbons said Thursday evening at the Rosamond Gifford Lecture Series at the John H. Mulroy Civic Center in Syracuse. "I could be artistically mute, like my mother was."
In a candid but comic lecture, titled "My Life With Manic Depression So Far," award-winning novelist Gibbons described an illness that has spun her in and out of hospital beds for nearly two decades, but empowered her to write stories that enchant millions.
It was during a six-week manic binge that Gibbons wrote her acclaimed debut novel, "Ellen Foster" (1987). Two days after she finished the manuscript, she began a three-month stay in a psychiatric ward, where one patient claimed to hear Jesus in the heating vents. She has cycled through mania and depression ever since. Her mother also suffered from manic depression and committed suicide before Gibbons was 10 The disease causes Gibbons to sometimes speak loudly and inappropriately in public places and go on manic shopping sprees. It plays a maddening loop of music in her head. Sometimes Christmas carols, sometimes a cacophony of popular radio tunes, she said. "If Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey had never sung a note, I'd be a lot saner," Gibbons said. "For six weeks, all I heard was 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.' It's the closest I've come to total self-destruction." But along with the torment, her mania can bring creative surges "in great rushing torrents," Gibbons said. She wrote her most recent novel, "On the Occasion of My Last Afternoon," in three months. She sometimes wrote for 40 to 60 hours at a stretch. On a "sane" day, Gibbons might have to divine a fictional image from her blank computer screen. But on a manic day, the image rises to the surface on its own. "Shimmering, waiting. All I had to do was pick it up," she said. If medical science had a magic pill for manic depression, the world would have been deprived of "Look Homeward, Angel" by Thomas Wolfe, who wrote in manic binges, and everything Herman Melville wrote, Gibbons said."I can't imagine the world without the artistry that has been touched by that fire," Gibbons said. Although Gibbons had to accept her fate - an incurable illness - she gives thanks for its residual blessings, she said. "All I can do and all I ever will do is write," Gibbons said. "I spend my days with my children, the man I adore, dogs, cats. I spend my days finding out who I am. Sometimes flinching, sometimes actually rejoicing when I hear the answers."
Kendall Gill, athlete (basketball) Kendall Gill suffered one depressive episode. It lasted eight days and would have an enduring effect on his life. In 1994-95 Gill was playing for the Seattle SuperSonics, though not nearly enough to suit him. He grew increasingly irritable and anxious. Gill, a Chicago native, obsessed over his diminished playing time, his homesickness, Seattle's rainy weather. He couldn't eat. He couldn't sleep. After one game in which he saw scant playing time, Gill lashed out at the Seattle coach, George Karl. He swept his arm across Karl's desk, knocking everything to the floor. The sensitive guard seemed to be coming apart. "I felt a sense of being trapped," says Gill, who left his apartment only to attend practices and games. Summoning the energy to get to those was a colossal chore. He told nobody that his skin suddenly felt two sizes too tight. "I always felt I was strong enough to endure anything," GillGill knew he needed help the night he went for a layup but couldn't get any lift from his legs because he was so exhausted. "I was coming to the point where . . . something bad was going to happen," says Gill. He phoned Dr. Lloyd Backus, who provides referrals through the NBA's mental health program. He described in detail what he was going through. Backus said it sounded as if he was depressed. Gill's initial reaction was disbelief, followed by denial. "I didn't want to admit I suffered from any symptoms of depression," he says. "I didn't come to grips with it for a long time." Gill saw a mental health professional referred to him by Backus. The diagnosis was clinical depression. The SuperSonics' management requested a second opinion. The second doctor concurred. Gill sat out five games. says. "That's what I'd been taught all my life."
Kit Gingrich, Newt’s mother
Johann Goethe, 1749-1832 writer, bipolar
Oliver Goldsmith, poet, bipolar
Dwight Gooden, 1964- baseball player, addiction, depression
Tipper Gore, 1948- wife of former U.S. vice-president Al Gore knows depression more intimately than most, since his wife and mother-in-law have battled with it for years.
Arshille Gorky, 1904-1948 artist, bipolar, suicide
Francisco de Goya, 1746-1828 painter, Towards the end of 1792 a traumatic change occurred in his life when he developed a mysterious illness - variously and unconvincingly interpreted as syphilis, lead poisoning from the use of white paint, and even a particularly severe nervous breakdown. At any rate, it caused him temporary paralysis and partial blindness, and left him permanently deaf. The illness had a significant effect on the development of Goya's art.
Phil Graham, 1915-1963 owner, Washington Post, Until his tragic suicide in 1963, Washington Post publisher Phil Graham struggled with manic depression. Though his depressive periods were bleak, his manic periods were remarkably productive. In one such state, Graham bought Newsweek magazine. In another, he drafted the plan for Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" program. And in another, while visiting John F. Kennedy in the White House, he picked up the red hotline telephone to the Pentagon and exclaimed, "Scramble the planes! Scramble the planes!"
Vincent Van Gogh, artist, bipolar disorder, Starry Night, Sunflowers, the celebrated artist's bipolar disorder is discussed in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb and Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Van GoghMariette Hartley, 1940- Actress, depression, bipolar, suicidal. Mariette was diagnosed with severe depression in 1994 while experiencing a suicidal episode. The prescribed antidepressants sent her into mania. That, she says, was when she realized that something else was going on. But even then she was first diagnosed with ADD, before finally being diagnosed as having bipolar disorder. She is quoted as saying, "Bipolar disorder is something that is mine, and it is very difficult to talk about. Breaking this silence has been really wrenching for me; I went into a kind of depression wondering if I really wanted to talk about all this. I finally decided that education is more important."
Anthony Hopkins, 1937- Welsh actor, addiction, depression, "For a long time I suffered from depression and alcoholism, and I knew I was slowly dying," he says. "I was very difficult to work with and all my friends would ask, "Why are you doing this to yourself?' I didn't know the answer. I'd get a big moment of success and crash it. Someone would give me a part, and I'd wonder what they were after. Were they giving handouts? "I don't think I'm mad, I think that sometimes I'm manic," he says. "My wife calms me down because I want everything now. I am just amazed that I am still here and doing what I'm doing at 68. That's pretty good."
Karen Kain, 1951- prima ballerina, eating disorder, Karen Kain's autobiography, Movement Never Lies, describes her entire career in ballet, from her first lessons in a grotty basement to the exhausting heights of stardom to the artistry of her mature years. She was still dancing professionally when she wrote the book but her perspective in the book is distinctly mature. Her evaluation of both herself and those around her is totally honest but also fair and compassionate. She exposes the dark underbelly of ballet—issues like eating disorders, AIDS, and deplorable working conditions—with sensitivity and diplomacy.
Edward Lear, 1812-1888 artist, illustrator, writer, depression, When Lear was about seven, possibly due to the constant instability of his childhood, he began to show signs of depression. He suffered from periods of severe depression which he referred to as "the Morbids."
Jack London, 1876-1916 writer, addiction, depression, suicide, The over all pattern of London's life was tragic--youthful poverty, two unsuccessful marriages, disillusionment, in time, with the Socialist party, and finally despair and (almost certainly) suicide.