Churchill's Black Dog

Acknowledging Depression
Public Figures Perform a Service in Revealing Mental Illness

By Kay Redfield Jamison
Sunday, June 25, 2006; B07

This past week [Montgomery County, MD, County Executive] Doug Duncan cited depression as the reason for dropping out of the race for governor of Maryland. One hopes that his directness will make it easier for other public figures to be more straightforward about their own experiences with this common, potentially lethal and yet treatable illness.

Most prominent Washingtonians who have depression are not open about their illness, nor do they make any concerted effort to improve the lives of the other 34 million Americans who also suffer from depression. They benefit from their access to the best doctors, researchers and hospitals, but they remain silent. This is understandable, at least to a point. There are risks involved in disclosing mental illness, including potential backlash from wary stockholders, skeptical voters, concerned investors, and unsympathetic employers and licensing boards. These concerns cannot be dismissed out of hand. Nor should anyone feel pressured to discuss in public what they confide to their doctors and psychotherapists. Confidentiality is an ancient and well-warranted social value.

Yet when public figures remain silent about depression there is a cost to the rest of society. Silence contributes to the misperception that successful people do not get depressed, and it keeps the public from seeing that treatment allows many individuals to return to competitive professional lives. Silence also contributes to the myth that people who are brilliant or "full of life" cannot possibly become so despairing as to kill themselves. They do. Every day. In short, silence helps perpetuate the stigma of mental illness. Those in the public eye -- whether in business, journalism, politics or the professions -- have a unique opportunity to lessen this stigma, mobilize research efforts, raise money and educate others who do not have the same financial and educational advantages.

There are exceptions to this general unwillingness of public figures to discuss depression. Some people -- Mike Wallace, William Styron, Art Buchwald, Patty Duke and Dick Cavett, for example -- have spoken out for years. Tom Johnson, former chairman and chief executive officer of CNN, along with other well-known businessmen, athletes and entertainers, has participated in public awareness campaigns about depression. A few prominent individuals in science and medicine -- Sherwin Nuland, Yale surgeon and writer; Leon Rosenberg, former dean of the Yale Medical School; and Mark Vonnegut, writer and physician -- have openly discussed their depression and bipolar illness. Several politicians and wives of politicians have been public about their experiences with depression or bipolar illness, including Lawton Chiles, Patrick Kennedy, Tipper Gore and Kitty Dukakis. Each made a tremendous difference by doing so.

Kay Redfield Jamison is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School, author of An Unquiet Mind and Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, among other books. She is herself a manic-depressive. I agree with her about the importance of public figures outing themselves to help de-stigmatize the disorder. But the medical profession needs to be doing more, too. A campaign of public service announcements are in order. Only a fraction of the people suffering from mood disorders ever receive treatment. There is nothing redemptive about unnecessary suffering, ever.