Don’t Stop Supporting Your Creative (and Depressed) Friend

Artists are Haunted By “Tortured Genius” Stereotypes

“A person with the silhouette of hands on their face, against a black background” by Elijah Hiett on Unsplash

I originally wrote about depression and suicide among creatives on my old Blogger blog “Pickups and Rewrites,” back in 2013. At the time, my former film school classmate and former child actor Lee Thompson Young took his own life. While he seemed friendly and talented enough, he was battling depression and bipolar disorder, unbeknownst to many of his acquaintances. Some portions of my original blogpost are here.

There is an old film school metajoke: film student creates “serious” French New Wave-inspired student film about death or dying. Hell, even I did it (although my film was more Bergman-inspired). But a creative person’s obsession with death is more true-to-life than we care to acknowledge.

Most of us awoke yesterday to hear that Anthony Bourdain committed suicide while in France. Earlier this week, Kate Spade hung herself in New York. And a few days ago, the CDC announced a surprising 30 percent increase in suicide rates since 1999. Both Spade and Bourdain were in well-coveted positions. While Spade was one of the top handbag designers in the world, Bourdain was a chef who inspired a new generation of Instagram jet-setting and globe-trotting influencers. But both of them felt compelled to end their…