Fame does not make you immune to mental illness or suicide.
Grim online reactions to Jeff Baena's passing reveal there's still much ignorance about mental health out there. And this ignorance quickly turns toxic where fame is involved.
[TW: Repeated discussion of mental health issues, trauma, and suicide]
I will never not be grateful to be where I’ve ended up in life. I’m a full-time author, who gets to both work from home and travel the world. It’s a position many people covet, and I’m very fortunate to be where I am right now.
There will always be a bittersweet undercurrent to it, though. Because I likely wouldn’t be where I am now… if Robin William’s hadn’t died.
Context: August 11th, 2014, I arrived in my office where I worked as a postgraduate Psychiatry lecturer/tutor, turned on my PC, and learned that the beloved Robin Williams had died by suicide, shocking and upsetting news for countless people, myself very much included.
But what made it even worse were the many ‘takes’, often from bleakly high-profile types, about how he was “selfish” for doing this, when he had so much, and was loved and admired by so many.
Granted, I’d seen such sentiments every time a famous or prominent person died by suicide (itself a sadly common occurrence), even from numerous online ‘friends’. But it had never been as stark, so prominent in the mainstream, and so soon (within mere hours) after someone’s passing1.
And I thought… “I wish someone in the media would push back against this dangerous nonsense!” And then I remembered, I was a Guardian science blogger at the time. Not exactly a ‘big deal’ in the media world. But better than nothing.
Ergo, I then spent about 90 minutes writing an evidence-based scientific explanation about why depression and suicide are not selfish, regardless of who experiences them. My editor agreed to publish it, but warned it was unlikely to have much impact, given that there were numerous Williams-related articles in the pipeline, from contributors with far greater name recognition.
Fair enough. At least I’d be able to say I’d tried to push back against the ‘selfish’ narrative.
Multiple millions of reads over just a few days later, it remains, by some distance, the most successful article I’ve ever written. And I honestly believe it’s why I’m a full-time writer now.
It’s not that publishers were hammering on my door with book contracts the next morning. At the time I was already speaking with several, although nothing was certain. But then, suddenly, I was the guy who wrote the Robin Williams article that everyone had read, and (apparently) now a go-to person for sensitive takes on mental health matters. This certainly made my eventual book publication much easier.
I often wonder, though, where I’d be now if Williams was still with us.
But, a decade on, I find myself compelled to return to this same subject. Because the recent tragic passing of director Jeff Baena, and the reactions from certain quarters, show there’s still a great deal of ignorance out there, about mental health, mental disorders, and the interplay between them, and fame.
I don’t know what a complete stranger has gone through. And neither does anyone else.
Confession: my knowledge of modern popular culture is ‘surface level’ at best2. Meaning, unlike Robin Williams, I didn’t know anything about Jeff Baena, before reading the articles about his passing.
I now know that he was 47, and a well-liked, well-regarded director of successful, critically-acclaimed indie movies. Many of which starred Aubrey Plaza, his wife.
What I don’t know, is anything about his early years, his background or culture, his experiences or traumas, his work-life balance, his genetic profile, his career prospects and obligations, his family history, or any of the myriad other factors about someone that can, and will, impact their mental health.
Basically, I have nowhere near enough information to make a valid assessment of Baena’s mental state. Not that I’d do that anyway.
And I’m guessing the same goes for anyone who’s publicly ‘shared their views’ on Baena’s motivations for doing what he did. Hasn’t stopped them, though. Sadly.
Credit where it’s due, I’ve not yet seen any ‘mainstream’ articles calling Baena selfish, or criticising him for the manner of his death. It’s a different story in the comment sections, though3. There, and on sites like Twitter/X, the ‘selfishness’ accusations (and others just as bad, or worse) remain rife. Granted, ‘People on Elon Musk’s X are posting absolutely vile things’ is tantamount to saying “Those fish are wet”; it’d be more shocking if they weren’t.
But given how the boosting and sharing of the worst possible opinions seems to be a lucrative pursuit now, no doubt they’ll keep popping up.
Because Baena was, by most people’s metrics, a famous and successful person. He was a Hollywood director! He made movies! He was married to the amazing Aubrey Plaza, something countless men, and a not-insignificant number of women, could only dream of.
How could someone with so much, that so many people desperately aspired to, end their own life?
Because that’s not how mental health works. At all.
The nature of mental health means nobody is immune to it going awry
What determines someone’s mental health?
Soooooo many things. Experiences and memories, genetics and biology, their perception, upbringing, relationships, their environment, their social status, career, and so much more.
And with so many things contributing to our mental wellbeing, it means there are so many opportunities for something to go wrong with it.
Genes, for example. Many mental health conditions have a significant genetic component. So, if there’s a history of a certain mental problem in your family, the odds of you developing it yourself are notably higher, no matter what path your life takes. Because you can’t change genetics4 .
There are things we can do to reduce the odds of poor mental health, though. For one, a huge factor in the most common mental health disorders is stress. Rule of thumb: the more stressed you are, the more your mental health and wellbeing suffers. And if you experience more stress than you can handle…
That’s why people who experience constant stress have higher rates of poor mental health. Classic example, poverty. Living in high-crime areas, never knowing if you’re going to be able to afford rent, or heat, or food, that’s massively stressful. And also why political efforts to focus on mental health “instead” of poverty are farcical.
Of course, if you manage to work your way out of poverty, achieving financial security, even becoming rich, that particular source of stress goes away, and your mental health improves.
But that’s just one factor. There are so many others that can still cause considerable stress.
What if it’s your genes that mean you can’t process or respond to stress (or other factors) properly?
What if it’s your relationship, or family situation, that’s toxic and stressful?
What if you escaped poverty by working by pursuing an uncertain, risky, demanding, exhausting career? Doesn’t that just swap one source of stress for another?
To reiterate, none of these are guaranteed. If you improve your situation and remove stressors, the odds of you becoming mentally unwell will reduce. But they’ll never go away entirely. They can’t.
Ultimately, assuming that a rich and famous person should never be mentally unwell is like saying a trained athlete should be immune to cancer, or an astronaut could never die in a plane crash. Even if you feel such thing ‘makes sense’, they’re clearly wrong.
Sometimes, these things happen. In an ideal world, they wouldn’t. But this is by no means an ideal world.
The things that affect mental health are subjective
Countless people in the UK, particularly in the medical field, experience poor mental health because of burnout from work.
Isn’t that kick in the face for those unemployed, and living below the poverty line, whose mental health is suffering accordingly? Surely they’d love to be in work and earning, rather than having to rely on meagre benefits.
But isn’t that a kick in the face for those in third world countries, or war-torn regions, where life is a constant battle to survive in the absence of any support or infrastructure? Their mental health is inevitably terrible. They’d be happy to live in an intact building, with ‘benefits’.
And so on.
Again, that’s not how it works! Your stressful situation being objectively preferable to someone else’s doesn’t make it any less stressful for you. If it did, then only the person in the worst situation on Earth would have their mental health affected by it. This is clearly not the case.
The baselines that determine one’s mental health, like the amount of stress you can handle/trauma you’re able to endure, or your expectations and idea of what’s normal or acceptable, they’re all set according to your own life and experiences. Accordingly, what does/doesn’t impact your mental health varies considerably from person to person.
For someone in poverty, losing £50 can be an absolute disaster, while a billionaire wouldn’t even register it.
Alternatively, if the impoverished person discovered their bank balance was £250,000, they’d be overjoyed (and probably confused). But if the billionaire checked their balance and found ‘only’ £250,000, they’d have a complete meltdown. Because the significance of events, and whether they’re good or bad, is a very subjective thing. And so is the impact they have on your wellbeing and mental health.
Ultimately, being rich/famous/successful can definitely remove factors from your life that endanger mental health, but it can also introduce new ones. Sure, it may not. But there’s no guarantee.
Because, again, that’s not how anything works.
Fame… not exactly known for being great for mental health
People often want to be famous. We humans are an ultrasocial species, who find the approval of others genuinely rewarding. So to be admired by thousands, millions, that’s a massively appealing goal for many. Indeed, people will often accept fame in lieu of actual money.
But fame seems to be something where the idealised goal and the reality are markedly different. Consider the countless tales of people who were ‘chewed up and spat out’ by the music or movie or TV industries, all of which have well-deserved reputations for being ruthless, demanding, high-risk, fickle etc. Or the many megastars and celebrities who die tragically young, due to ‘their demons’, or however else it’s phrased.
Unrestricted access to hedonism, ruthless control by those in charge of your career, total immersion in a community of worshippers and yes-men warping your reality, the constant pressure to create and entertain with ever-new stuff in order to meet ever-inflating expectations, fame can involve all these things, and more. Meaning, as alluring as it may be, it often has a detrimental effect on mental health, rather than a protective one.
So much so, that life in the public spotlight (and since the advent of social media, on the direct receiving end of public judgement, 24/7) can prove to be… unendurable.
And that’s assuming your mental health was in good shape before you achieved fame. Because after all, no successful artist or performer or creative has ever dealt with profound mental disorders.
Apart from, you know, most of the good ones.
You might say “But their life is great, they should focus on the positives!”
But while that may make logical sense, it doesn’t help. When you’re in the worst parts of a mental breakdown or pit of depressive despair, you often cannot focus on the positives. Your brain won’t let you. Telling someone in a mental health crisis to ‘focus on the positives’ is like telling someone who’s lost both legs to take up running; good advice in theory, but not actually feasible.
In extreme situations, all the fame and success in the world won’t feel significant. Only a sense of your own pain and worthlessness, and the overwhelming feeling that you’re existence causes nothing but suffering to those around you. And this leads to the worst possible outcome. As we’ve seen, far too many times.
Making it better, making it worse
To clarify, this isn’t a long-winded attempt to say that everyone who’s rich/famous/powerful has just as hard a life as the poorest poor person, because that’s nonsense.
Whether it’s Alan Titchmarsh insisting buying a house was just as hard in the 70s as it is today, or millionaire heiress Kim Kardashian moaning that ‘nobody wants to work any more’, it’s just people denying or downplay their (considerable) privilege and advantages, for some fatuous reason. Such nonsense shouldn’t be indulged.
What I am saying, though, is that fame, wealth, influence, they can shield you from many things. But not mental health struggles.
Like I said, I don’t know anything about the late Jeff Baena. Maybe nothing I’ve written here applies to him? Maybe it all does. It’s not my place to say. But assuming he was grappling with profound mental health issues, him being a successful director with a famous wife does not exempt him from compassion and empathy. And the same goes for anyone in a similar situation.
And it’s important to remember that, because no doubt there are many people like that out there, experiencing similar hardships. And they’re probably doing so in silence, which invariably makes matters much worse.
Maybe because they’ve seen that people like them will receive scorn and judgement for their problems, even if they’ve ultimately succumbed to them.
Basically, however hurt you may be by a famous person’s suicide, that’s no excuse to spew vitriol about them in the total absence of any facts.
If you have been affected by suicidal ideation of any sort, the Samaritans can be contacted here, and the NHS list of resources is here.
If you want to know more about how mental health/disorders works, my book Psycho-Logical goes into much more detail. For young people, check out The Idiot Brain, or my children’s books.
Or more specifically, within hours of the breaking news of his passing. I don’t know the turnaround time. I also don’t feel it matters.
Unless we’re talking about the things my kids watch, like Bluey, or Teen Titans Go. Then I could do a thesis on them.
I’m not going to link to any examples, because to hell with them.
For what it’s worth, some people have flagged up Baena’s 2020 film ‘Horse Girl’ as being ‘inspired by his family’s mental health struggles. Although, this is not conclusive of anything. In fact, the article linked to refers Baena’s ‘first stepmother’ as being the one with mental health issues, suggesting no shared genetics. But ‘first stepmother’ also logically implies multiple divorces, and a potentially ‘chaotic’ family life for any child in such an environment, which evidence suggests is another big factor in later life mental health problems.
Thank you for writing this piece. Mental illness is not a competition for who has it worst to justify any action (including completing suicide). But the below the line commentators love to believe it does work that way. Thanks for always trying to remind that it does NOT work that way...
Thank you.