Rejection of People With Mental Illness by Family Members

One of the near influential writers of the 20^thursday century, Ernest Hemingway'southward stripped-downwards prose new literary voice captivated critics and readers akin. His outsized personality and manlike swagger made him a star beyond the printed pages of his newspaper articles, short stories and novels. Behind the façade, however, Hemingway faced a lifelong boxing against depression, alcoholism and mental wellness bug, all of which contributed to his death past suicide on July two, 1961. But it wasn't simply Hemingway who suffered, as several generations of his family confronted similar bug, in what i of his granddaughters called the "Hemingway curse."

Hemingway had a troubled relationship with his parents

He was the 2d child of Clarence "Ed" Hemingway and his wife, Grace. Ed was a successful physician and Grace was a sometime singer and music teacher. Much of his babyhood was split betwixt the family unit's home in Oak Park, Illinois, and a firm in the forest of Michigan, where Ed passed downward his dearest of hunting and the outdoors. But Hemingway struggled to connect with his begetter, who despite his placid outside could exist a vehement, domineering bully.

He also had a fraught relationship with his mother, who dressed Hemingway as a girl when he was a child. Hemingway'south third wife, journalist Martha Gellhorn, would later attribute Hemingway'due south difficulties with women, including infidelity, cruelty and abandonment, to his relationship with Grace. Every bit Gellhorn would write years after the collapse of their matrimony and Hemingway's expiry, "Deep in Ernest, due to his mother, going dorsum to the indestructible first memories of childhood, was mistrust and fearfulness of women."

READ More: 10 Things You May Not Know About Ernest Hemingway

He seemed prepare on a path of self-destruction from an early age

Seeking adventure and an escape from his suburban life, Hemingway left home as a teen, eventually volunteering as an ambulance driver in Earth War I. Severely wounded in Italia, he vicious in dear with his nurse, and her eventual rejection of him led to a depressive episode that would get characteristic of his life. While working as a journalist back in America, he married his first wife, Hadley Richardson, and the couple moved to Paris then Hemingway could focus on writing fiction.

He soon constitute himself at the center of an artistic circumvolve of boyfriend expats, known as the "Lost Generation," forming relationships with future luminaries like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, John Dos Passos and others. Merely Hemingway'south mercurial temperament, exacerbated by the prodigious drinking and often-pugilistic personality that would go his trademarks, led to conflicts with Richardson and his circle of friends, who struggled to cope when his mood turned towards jealousy, mistrust and farthermost competitiveness.

Ernest Hemingway, wearing drinking vodka from the canteen in Venice, Italy, 1954

Photo: Archivio Cameraphoto Epoche/Getty Images

His begetter'southward suicide left a deep wound

Despite Hemingway'due south destructive personal life, he plant professional success, publishing his first novel, The Dominicus Also Rises, in 1926. Earlier that yr, he had begun an affair with journalist Pauline Pfeiffer, and soon divorced Richardson — a decision that caused him peachy mental anguish and which he reportedly regretted for the rest of his life.

In December 1928, when Hemingway was 29, his father killed himself, shooting himself with a family unit revolver after a long period of both physical and financial setbacks. Hemingway was deeply shaken by his father's expiry, which he largely blamed on his mother. He alternated betwixt anger at what he considered a "cowardly" move, and a sense of resignation that he might endure the same fate equally his male parent, writing to his so-mother in law presently later on, "I'll probably get the aforementioned way." He also fictionalized the events in his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which the male parent of the chief character commits suicide in a like fashion.

For many of his family and friends, Hemingway's risky life choices, including his obsessions with hunting and the gory, spectacle of bullfighting, as well as his blitz to join the action during the Spanish Civil War and World War Two, reflected a perhaps morbid fascination with darkness and death. Every bit he reportedly told extra and close friend Ava Gardner in 1954, "I spend a hell of a lot of time killing animals and fish so I won't kill myself."

READ MORE: The Many Wives of Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway'south concluding years were troubled

In 1940, Hemingway bought a home in Cuba, and although he continued to travel the globe, it would be his main residence for the adjacent 20 years. He published his last major work of fiction, The Old Man and the Sea, in 1952, winning a Pulitzer Prize in 1953 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, bringing him a new level of international fame. That same year, Hemingway was virtually killed post-obit two plane accidents while traveling in Africa, suffering a cracked skull, ruptured liver and spleen, two cracked discs, as well as other injuries. The accidents led to a precipitous decline in both his physical and mental health, with a crippled Hemingway disregarding doctors' orders to adjourn his drinking.

When he and his fourth married woman, Mary Welsh, finally returned to Cuba in 1957, he began work on A Moveable Feast, a memoir of his early years in Paris. Only unlike all the before works that seemingly flowed out of him, he struggled to finish the piece (information technology would be published posthumously), and his frustration further deepened his depression. As the political situation in Cuba worsened, Hemingway and Welsh left in July 1960, and over the side by side few months, Hemingway became increasingly isolated and paranoid, convinced that he was under surveillance by the FBI.

Ernest Hemingway rests his head after supervising the filming of the big screen version of his novel "The Erstwhile Human and the Body of water," 1956

Photo: Bettmann/Getty Images

He attempted to get help at the Mayo Dispensary soon earlier his death

In the fall of 1960, the couple settled into a newly-built business firm in Ketchum, Idaho. Hemingway'southward instability intensified, as his worried mind became convinced that, despite his publishing success, he was on the verge of going broke. In November, Welsh and Hemingway's physician convinced him to travel to Minnesota's renowned Mayo Dispensary. His doctors prescribed the then-new drug Librium, besides a course of electroconvulsive treatments, which robbed him of his short-term memory and seemed to provide little relief. Just Hemingway'due south doctors, mayhap persuaded by his notwithstanding powerful and persuasive charm, released him into Welsh'due south care after only 7 weeks.

Back in Ketchum, he found himself unable to write, often struggling for hours or even days to write a few sentences and was forced to abolish plans to attend the inauguration of John F. Kennedy that January. He threatened to kill himself several times, and when he was being transported back to the Mayo Dispensary for a second time in April, he reportedly tried to walk into the propeller of the plane carrying him there. By this fourth dimension, news of his Mayo stay had fabricated headlines, with locals reporting sightings and interactions with Hemingway, whose doctors allowed him to come up and get every bit he pleased (and also permitted him to drink despite medical tests that revealed meaning liver damage).

Doctors once again released him in late June. 2 days after he arrived home, on the morning of July 2, 1961, he establish the keys to the gun cabinet that Welsh had poorly hidden, pulled out his favorite rifle and several bullets then shot himself in head within the home's foyer. He was less than three weeks shy of his 62^nd birthday. Early paper accounts described his death every bit accidental, the result of a misfire while he was cleaning his guns. Merely these early reports were largely fueled by Welsh, who refused to publicly acknowledge that he had killed himself until several years after his death.

READ MORE: Inside Ernest Hemingway'southward Key W Home and How It Inspired Many of His Famous Writings

New research has helped shed calorie-free on contributing causes for Hemingway's struggles

In 2006, Dr. Christopher D. Martin, a psychiatrist and Hemingway fan, published a groundbreaking written report based on medical records, correspondence, biographies and interviews that aimed to shed light on Hemingway'due south mental wellness history. He found what he believed to be significant prove that Hemingway presented symptoms of bipolar disorder, as well as possible deadline and egotistic personality traits, which were exacerbated by a lifetime of alcoholism. Martin also delved into both Ed and Grace's history of low, arguing that Hemingway likely carried a genetic predisposition towards mental disease, as well equally deep, unresolved acrimony at both his parents for his upbringing.

In his 2017 book Hemingway'southward Brain, psychiatrist Andrew Farah argued that Hemingway's symptoms more closely resembled chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) than bipolar disorder. According to Farah, Hemingway suffered at least nine concussions or severe brain traumas during his lifetime, which might explicate his increased instability and volatility. And the electroconvulsive treatments Hemingway received in his concluding months may have really exacerbated his psychological decline.

Yet some other theory holds that Hemingway suffered from hemochromatosis, a rare genetic disorder that leads to an inability to absorb iron. Left untreated, it can atomic number 82 to intense fatigue, memory loss, depression and diabetes, all of which afflicted both Hemingway and other family unit members. But as with other conjectures almost the cause of Hemingway's mental wellness struggles, experts are unable to be 100 percent certain of any diagnosis.

Writer Jack Hemingway with daughters (L-R) Muffet, Margaux and Mariel, 1986

Photo: Fourth dimension Life Pictures/DMI/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images

Several other Hemingway family members subsequently struggled with mental wellness issues

Just five years after Hemingway'south decease, his sis Ursula, who was battling both cancer and ongoing depression, died due to a deliberate overdose of pills. Leicester, Hemingway'due south but brother and the youngest of the half dozen siblings, was the writer of several books, including a biography of his brother. He shot himself in 1982, post-obit years of health issues stemming from diabetes. Hemingway's youngest child, Gregory (likewise known as Gloria), suffered from alcoholism and was diagnosed with manic depression, and his relationship with his father was farther strained by Hemingway's reluctance to accept his child's transgendered identity.

Two of Hemingway'due south granddaughters faced their own mental health battles. Joan, nicknamed "Muffet" and the eldest girl of Hemingway'southward first son, Jack, was diagnosed with manic depression. Her sister Margaux struggled to overcome learning disabilities, including dyslexia, and establish fame as a supermodel and extra in the late 1970s. Fascinated by the mystique of her famous granddaddy, she later claimed she lived her fast-paced life in emulation of him. But epilepsy, eating disorders, depression and substance abuse derailed her once-promising career. She committed suicide in 1996, with her torso discovered on the 35^thursday ceremony of her grandfather's decease.

His granddaughter has become a fierce abet for mental health

Mariel Hemingway, Margaux and Muffet'southward younger sister, also became an extra, earning an Oscar nomination for her piece of work in Manhattan. She, too, struggled with depression at several points in her life, unable to process the multi-generational mental illness and substance abuse that plagued her family. Born several months after Hemingway's death, she recalls a dangerous and cluttered upbringing, in which she and her sisters were told little nearly their famous grandfather but experienced a chaotic and sometimes dangerous upbringing in line with the Hemingway family unit. Equally she told the Miami Herald, "I grew upwardly watching a family that was completely amazing and artistic but also destructive and cocky-medicating. All of them, they were addicts. I didn't want to end upwards like that. I was on a mission."

Determined to both erase the stigma surrounding mental illness and depression and break what she'due south referred to as the "Hemingway curse," she's become a health and self-help abet, publishing several books and starring in a 2013 documentary. She hopes that by shedding a low-cal on her family unit's history, she can help others seek the assist and acceptance they deserve. Equally she told WNYC in 2016, "I think nosotros alive in a world where creativity is defined by how much pain you get through, and that's a misinterpretation of artistry… I think if my gramps were around today, he would go, 'Wow, I didn't have to endure.'"

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Source: https://www.biography.com/news/ernest-hemingway-mental-illness-family