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December 18, 2007

William Styron's Depressions

William Styron was a celebrated novelist who wrote such classics as The Confessions of Nat Turner and Sophie's Choice. He enjoyed success while still young, and had an active social life with the best minds and artists of the 20th century. He had great energy and vitality, tending to be feisty and to give reign to a mercurial temper. He drank a lot. He died last year after he spent the last 20 years of his life struggling with recurrent depressions. During this time he dedicated himself to helping people to overcome stigma and get treatment for their depressions. He did this by publicly discussing his own illness and recovery, and describing his experience in a book, Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness.

His daughter, Alexandra Styron, has written a vivid portrayal of his triumphs and torments in an article in the December 10, 2007 issue of The New Yorker magazine. What emerges is that despite recovering from several severe depressions with hospital treatment, each episode was more devastating and at the end of his life there was no stopping his slide downhill, the symptoms of his depression setting the stage for his fatal illnesses. Ms. Styron does not state this, but his drinking probably made his prognosis worse and treatment less effective.

Ms. Styron's article calls to our attention the fact that despite major advances in the pharmacologic and psychotherapeutic treatment of depression, it is still very important to find more effective treatments and to support further research into this terrible scourge.

Posted by admin at December 18, 2007 02:28 PM