Robin Williams, mental health, and social insanity
by MICHAEL K. SMITH
Hollywood actor Robin Williams who committed suicide on August 11, 2014 PHOTO/Wikipedia
Robin Williams’s body was scarcely cold when liberal commentators began using the tragedy of his death as publicity for suicide hotlines and professional mental health intervention in general. He had long-standing depression, we were told, and his “mental illness” was manifest in his decision to take his own life. Depression sufferers were urged to “be honest” and avail themselves of the services of professional therapists and counselors.
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Even if Williams’s well-known depression, which long-predated his Parkinson’s diagnosis, was involved in his decision to end his life, the liberal notion that we can and ought to rely on mental health professionals to guide us to health and sanity is more than a little suspect. There is no evidence that this group suffers lower rates of depression than the rest of the population, nor any that any kind of therapy has a cure for it. In fact, the evidence suggests that the mental health profession plays a crucial role in perpetuating a status quo within which depression is said to be growing by leaps and bounds.
Psychoanalyst Joel Kovel demonstrated in the early 1980s that psychotherapy and counseling had become indispensable parts of the capitalist economy, especially in the United States, where turning socially induced misery into false questions of self-improvement long ago reached the status of a quasi-religious movement. Subsequent to Kovel’s published insights came the “diseasing” and drugging of hyper-active American schoolchildren due to what eventually came to be known as “ADHD.” In more recent years, we have seen how “happiness psychology,” particularly the work of conservative academic and writer Martin Seligman, a former chairman of the American Psychological Association and adviser to the U.S. military, informed the Bush Administration’s torture program at Guantanamo Bay. All of this should make us quite skeptical about claims that therapy and counseling have the answer to our mental woes.
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Comic actor and performer Robin Williams, dead at 63
by DAVID WALSH
Comic performer and actor Robin Williams, 63, was found dead at his home in Tiburon, California on Monday, apparently as the result of suicide. According to various sources, Williams suffered from bouts of severe depression and had struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction at various points in his life. He had open heart surgery in 2009.
The news of Williams’ death has evoked genuine sadness throughout the United States and beyond. But his death calls not only for sadness, but also for anger. Once again, the brutality of American society has claimed the life of another immensely sensitive and beloved artist. The loss of Williams follows by only several months the tragic death of Philip Seymour Hoffman. Several years ago, the actor Heath Ledger died before he had reached 30. A comprehensive list of major American artists whose lives ended due to some form of suicide—whether deliberate or accidental—would contain hundreds, if not several thousand, names.
Invariably, when death is the result of suicide or drugs, the media refers to the deceased’s “personal demons,” as if the cause of the tragedy lay in the psyche of the individual. But the terrible frequency of such events demands a social explanation. One cannot avoid the conclusion that an artist of Robin Williams’ caliber was especially vulnerable to the blows delivered relentlessly by the existing social setup—with its endless glorification of all that is base and rotten (that is, its adulation of the rich and their values)—to a human being’s innate sense of decency. The fate of Robin Williams’—for all its poignancy—is a highly visible manifestation of the extreme distress in which so many millions of Americans live.
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