Do you know that old question about what might have happened to Van Gogh if he’d had antidepressants available? It’s a stupid question, in a lot of ways. He killed himself, probably as a result of the same mental illness that shows up in his work. If he’d had Prozac, he might he might have lived to see his own work become famous.
And yet, people ask. Didn’t he gain something? Didn’t we?
There’s no glory to a life lost to mental illness, whether through time wasted away in sickness or through suicide. There’s nothing romantic about depression. (I write this a few days after hearing about Heath Ledger’s possible suicide.) We, as humans, have lost too many people to mental illness, to early death, to unbearable pain. We have lost brilliant people to psychotic worlds of their own creation. No amount of creativity will ever justify the raw cost of mental illness. No benefit can justify this degree of human suffering. So, maybe Van Gogh never would have painted The Starry Night, and the world would go on without him. Maybe he would have become a better painter, tempered by age and experience. Maybe he would have prevented World War I. We will never know.
I’m going somewhere with this, actually. There’s an article up on The Guardians’ Joe Public blog asking, Would you vote for an MP with mental health issues? The attached poll, at this moment, is resoundly in favor of doing so, but I’m inclined to wonder if Americans would so easily say the same thing. Americans seem to like strong leaders, and I can imagine the fear that someone with a history of depression might break under stress. But I think of Winston Churchill (depression), and Abraham Lincoln (also depression), and I know that these people made spectacular leaders.
Here’s where Van Gogh comes in. People with mental illnesses are, above all, people; some are full of wisdom and some seem stuck in their own minds. However, I think that people with mental illness must derive some advantage from it. I don’t honestly believe that depression has an evolutionary advantage, but as we see in Van Gogh, it does have some connection to creativity. Various studies have found that people with depression tend to gravitate towards creative professions.
I think, also, that depression makes people more aware of the pain of others. Suffering builds compassion, and the pointless suffering of depression helps us to feel for people who have gone through things without actually enduring them. On a fundamental level, this means that people who have gone through depression and overcome it are more equipped to help those in trouble, tend to those in pain, and console those living with grief. Where depressive episodes make people less sociable, depression in life can make people better social animals.
I would never wish Van Gogh’s life on anyone. Whatever benefits depression may offer, they aren’t worth hurting innocent people for. I believe, however, that the people out there with mental illnesses can find some benefit in what they’re experiencing, instead of letting themselves suffer for no reason. What differentiates Van Gogh from so many others is that he used his illness to give something to the world.
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