So he was only a year old when his mother committed suicide? No doubt the feminists will blame this on Ted Plath too.

it' s actually ted hughes

This is sad, very sad.
Ana

My guess is it was pyroluria. This condition runs in families, produces mental symptoms and depression, and can result in suicide. Easily corrected - sufferers recover when they are given lacking zinc, B6 and a few other things. See link...

no...it does not have to be hereditary at all...and people will say that is what this suggests...what it suggests to me is a poor baby boy lost his mother to tragedy 46 years ago. A baby experiences the loss of a mother as horrible, life threatening abandonment and that is called TRAUMA the root of most mental illness in my opinion, though yes, nutrients of all sorts can help, I can't imagine why you think you can diagnose pyroluria, Lily, which indeed can cause psychiatric symptoms and is also easily treated...but we don't know enough to say that here. Trauma, is clear and evident.

This is heartbreaking and really gave me a painful pang of sadness.

re:lacking zinc
Despair is a feeling, an emotion that motivates some one to do something.
A chemical imbalance can not make complex logical decisions on how to kill oneself.

In his autobiography, published shortly before his death in 1998, Ted Hughes, Sylvia's former husband, wrote that Sylvia had taken a dose of one of the older antidepressants shortly before committing suicide because she had taken them once before and they had made her suicidal.

On another topic in this case [and I am not saying this with a feminist agenda], I do believe that abandoning your wife when she is caring for your children, ages one and two, is about as low as you can go.

Here is a case from SSRI Stories which mentions Sylvia Plath.

http://www.ssristories.com/show.php?item=658

Can't anyone just be depressed anymore? Does suicide really have to indicate some sort of biological illness?

My guess is it was pyroluria. This condition runs in families, produces mental symptoms and depression, and can result in suicide.

Hmmm...runs in families...produces mental symptoms...can (and evidently did) result in suicide...my guess is depression. Especially since pyroluria is a widespread, catch-all alternative medicine diagnosis that doesn't seem to have a lot of actual evidence behind it as a causative factor for anything.

In this article Hughes is said to have claimed Plath took the pills accidentally. He also never identified the specific antidepressant, though I have little doubt it was Elavil or something very much like it, as there really wasn't anything else available in 1963.

Ted Hughes blamed drug for Plath's suicide

I find it really hard to believe that a whopping dose of Elavil would lead to a burst of any kind of activity, suicidal or otherwise. Its hallmark side effect is drowsiness. Having taken it myself, I will attest to that. Ranks right up there with Seroquel, it does. I guess there's always the possibility of a paradoxical reaction, but...wow. I stole one from my mother in 7th grade and took it before school. What a long day that was, trying to stay awake enough to not draw attention to myself. And I fell asleep in the bathtub that night.

I also had a prescription for it a few years later, and it did the same thing.

I'm sorry but any reason, biological or psychological, here is speculation.
This is me. My opinion.
Poor woman! Not remembered by her work and now a second time motive for all kind of intrusion.
R.I.P both Sylvia Plath and Nicolas Hughes.
We have many writers, painters, actors and celebrities whose suicides we can discuss.
Do politicians commit suicide?
A sister of one of the doorkeepers of the building I live has jumped from the window.
Does she count?
No, I don't think so.

River Phoenix!
What a terrible death...
John Borlan, Jim Morrison,
Okay! It was not suicide.
It's suicide that is at stake here. The mortal sin.

if one reads "the bell jar" one will understand that sylvia's mental problems were evident long before she met ted hughes.

some families are just riddled with tragedy. and this clearly is an example of one of them.

may he rest in peace.

For markp.s2
You wrote,
"Despair is a feeling, an emotion that motivates some one to do something.
A chemical imbalance can not make complex logical decisions on how to kill oneself."

Ah, but a chemical can... think of all the antidepressants that have caused suicides and murders.

Gianna, I respect you very much, but on this matter you are as yet unstudied.

Lilly NC "think of all the antidepressants that have caused suicides and murders"

The chemicals should be in jail then, like a hammer, gun or bottle of alcohol.

People feel something first, then they (the person) does something because of the feeling.

The chemicals can inhibit the moral part of the brain that makes "right" and "wrong" decisions.

Who introduced the mind altering chemical into the (adult) person, and was the patient-person an informed adult (informed of the feelings induced) when they consumed chemical X.

(adult)People know the effects of alcohol, an adult knows how (and if they can) to consume it.

Psychiatrists who do not inform their patients of the possible feelings on chemical X, are morally responsible for their patients reactions, as most people do not question the validity or source of their feelings.

Legally the psychiatrist isn't responsible. Sweet deal for the shrink.
Win, win situation.
Patient gets better, "Good job!".
Patient gets worse,"Damn that brain chemical imbalance".

I'm sorry but any reason, biological or psychological, here is speculation.

Agreed.

Do politicians commit suicide?

They do. The most famous of these is probably Budd Dwyer, who had served in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, then in the Pennsylvania Senate. At the time of his death he was Pennsylvania treasurer. In 1987 he called a press conference the day before his sentencing on corruption charges. At this press conference, on live television, he pulled a gun from a manila envelope and shot himself. The footage of it is readily available on the internet and is one of the saddest, most disturbing things I've ever seen.

Gianna, I respect you very much, but on this matter you are as yet unstudied.

I'd say that in the matter of making long-distance clinical diagnoses of strangers based on blog posts, news accounts and things we learned in various literature classes, we're all quite unstudied.

May I ask what the "NC" stands for?

Response to Markp.s.2 - Antidepressants apparently can inhibit and damage the moral part of the brain - the frontal lobes. See link.

lkhllywd, pyroluria - an inherited metabolic disorder not unlike the more widely known porphyria of "The Madness of King George" - has been postulated as a cause of the brilliance and difficulties of such diverse personalities as Charles Darwin and Charles Manson, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. That's not something you learn in literature class; it's based on orthomolecular medicine.

NC is a postal abbreviation.

lkhllywd, pyroluria - an inherited metabolic disorder not unlike the more widely known porphyria of "The Madness of King George" - has been postulated as a cause of the brilliance and difficulties of such diverse personalities as Charles Darwin and Charles Manson, Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf. That's not something you learn in literature class; it's based on orthomolecular medicine.

I know what pyroluria is, and I know the many conditions it has been postulated to have caused. And no, one wouldn't learn about it in literature class. But one would learn what one knew of Sylvia Plath in literature classes, as well as what one knew of Ted Hughes. One would also learn those things from blog posts and news articles. All those ways of knowing produce only second-hand information. And no one, no matter how educated in whatever field, is qualified to make diagnoses based on second-hand information. One can make suppositions and hypotheses, but they will never be anything more than that.

And speaking of hypotheses, I will say again that there is no evidence that pyroluria is the causitive factor in any of the many conditions attributed to it.

Read Sylvia Plath's powerful poem on suicide:

http://textflows.com/Plath_Lady_Lazarus

Composed 4 months before her death.

"One can make suppositions and hypotheses, but they will never be anything more than that."
"One"? How grand!
Hypotheses are sometimes right. My guess is pyroluria. Someone else guessed trauma. Someone else might say Nicholas Plath was in despair over the state of marine ecology.
Those who come here seeking ways to exorcise their private demons may find help in orthomolecular medicine.

is there a gene that causes melancholy or a family curse that caused it? Nick Hughes' mother was a famous poet/writer, and his father was a former Poet Laureate of England. His step mother who raised him from the time he was a year old, also suicided when he was 6 years of age, in a murder suicide where she killed his baby step sister.

I don't believe in family curses, despite Hemingways, the poor sad death of Ms. Richardson this week, and studying Faulkner til my eyes were sore. Alcoholism may run in families, so does the ability to curl your tongue. But a suicide gene,.... no.

Some people just see the world differently, and react to it differently. I've been in their shoes. I get it. We all do. Right now i am fighting it myself, smoking and on my knees praying for the sun to rise and a new day to start, and grateful American flats don't have gas to go that way. It would be way to easy. And too damn tempting.

"One can make suppositions and hypotheses, but they will never be anything more than that." "One"? How grand!

"One" is the singular generic pronoun one uses when one's subject could be male or female. I had originally used "he" but I changed it because these days think one is sexist if one uses "he" as the generic singular. I considered "you" but it seemed accusatory and confrontational. So I settled on "one", which doesn't seem particularly grand to me. It's just proper grammar.

Those who come here seeking ways to exorcise their private demons may find help in orthomolecular medicine.

Or in traditional medicine which, for all its faults (and it does have them), has far more scientific evidence backing it.

Susan, I am sorry you are in a bad spot. Deficiencies can cause disorders in thinking and emotion. Identifying and correcting them can help.
Margot Kidder recovered from alcoholism and breakdown through orthomolecular medicine - http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/press/view.htm
Checklist for pyroluria -
http://www.nutritional-healing.com.au/content/articles-content.php?heading=Pyroluria
Woody McGinnis, autism and biochem expert, on pyroluria -
http://www.alternativementalhealth.com/articles/pyroluria.htm
Another theory on Nicholas Hughes - suicide a reaction to loss of father?
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/people,2132,why-ted-hughes-son-killed-himself,78894
lkhllywd - if you are going to make authoritative statements, please state your credentials and evidence.

lkhllywd - if you are going to make authoritative statements, please state your credentials and evidence.

My evidence that there is more scientific evidence behind traditional medicine (and I'm speaking of medicine in general here, not just psychiatry) than orthomolecular medicine? There isn't really any expertise required other than the ability to count. How many repeatable studies in peer-reviewed journals support the efficacy of traditional medicine? How many repeatable studies in peer-reviewed journals support the efficacy of orthomolecular medicine? I'll admit, I haven't counted them one-by-one, but I am certain the scales tip sharply toward traditional medicine.

Lilly- thank you. I either am going through med withdrawal or have the cold from hell. I have not eaten or kept anything down since Friday and feel like something in the cat box. I talked a friend out of taking me to hospital today- tomorrow the big guns are coming to take me to the emergency room and cat sit i am just scared because a year ago on the 26th i was admitted to emergency room with pneumonia in both lungs, 105 degree temp, and flatlined. i dont want to die, scared shitless.

ikhllywd,
i am sure other politicians have died by their own hands, a quick look at Wikipedia gave lots of Romans for example.

Budd Dwyer is in our souls- because we saw it on TV. i was in the student center between classes when it played out on live TV just like seeing James Brady in a pool of blood is as well.

Family curse? Or cursed by psychiatry's latest toys? Father killed at (my) age one from early ECT, son killed by Zyprexa, Aunt Fanny suicide by head in gas oven, cousins galore with ? bipolar; whatever. If we had all lived in India, there may have been no deaths; possibly no "psyc. symptoms". Who knows?

Susan - Cat box? Check this out -
http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/intestinal-parasites-000097.htm

Susan - second pet link. These problems are much much more common than physicians lead us to believe. Source: Cornell U.
http://www.vet.cornell.edu/fhc/brochures/parasite.html

One of the most powerful anthelmintics (anti-parasite medications) is phenothiazine - an antipsychotic drug. Makes you wonder, doesn't it... maybe we should ask NAMI. ;)

Would you like to hear it from someone who knows as opposed to speculation about chemicals B vitamins etc?

Firstly a man who despite suffering the most heart rending loss that anyone could do and having it concealed from him by his father either through being protective or plain cowardice, became an expert in his chosen field and path and is tragically lost to the world.

How do I know? My mother killed herself in the next room to me through barbiturate overdose in 1964 when I was 2 and a half months old.My Dad was unable to look after me. I had wonderful grandparents who took me and cared for me. Later I had to piece together myself what had gone on because no-one told me apart from it could have been post natal illness. Quote from my step Aunt "At 6 you said your mother had died when you were very young and you thought it was your fault"

To those who don't know, you achieve but never recover, there is always a dark splinter right through your soul and when, as I did , you seek out what happenned and uncover, as I did-mental ill health as a result of war trauma re my mothers Dad and the bipolar issues of her sister.It is like someone slinging a rock in a pool in one generation and the ripples becoming tidal waves in another.

By the way-yes, you do think of suicide, you think you never should have been born because your birth became anothers loss. You need an identity with the person who has gone because they went so young and you cannot even remember their voice or face.To all you banging on about chemical imbalances and treatments, imagine that your only remnants of your lost mother through suicide were 4 passport photos plus passport, some college work and an old 1948 school magazine. How would your brain chemistry respond to that? No voice-no kind words-no memory of touch or affection.

Those who have been through this feel we have to work ourselves to death just to get a measure of normality but at a certain age we get tired of trying to ptove ourselves. Perhaps Nick just got fed up of "achieving" in order to hide the pain, who knows, everyone reacts in different ways but don't disect us, try and understand.Also people should not judge those left behind. People whospered about Ted Hughes, people also whispered about my Dad regarding my mothers suicide even though he was only 24 at the time and was working all the hours day and night to try and raise a familly.

Lastly,I personally think my mother took those pills because she was depressed but was scared of the archaic British psychiatric system then in which her father-who had served in the RAF in WW2 in Persia had died and her sister was an in patient probably subjected to hours of ECT from about 1957 to 1997 when she was moved to a care home. Perhaps she saw the abyss looming and tried to escape. Perhaps Sylvias son just got exhausted with having to live with his burden and just wanted to be with his mother again. Who knows but life stories are more complex than chemical equations.

RW

Very eloquent, Rob W. Thank you. I can relate entirely to your description of that exhaustion. Mine is caused by early trauma. It's almost impossible to explain that feeling and yes, it weighs upon you all the time and it does add up over the years.
Thank you.

Rob,
I'm back. I have not been able to get your words out of my head. You did such a beautiful job of explaining this, better than I have ever been able to do. "you achieve but never recover, there is always a dark splinter right through your soul".

I have cut and pasted your words into a word doc and placed it on my computer desktop. I have known many people who struggle this way, but never anyone who was able to put it into words. Words that might actually get through to someone. Words that let me know I'm not totally alone. Words that help bring a small amount of order to my universe.

I just contacted the one and only therapist I trust because things have been bad again lately. I am going to see her on Thursday. I hope you do not mind if I take your words with me for her to read so she will understand what I'm up against.

Thank you.
Sherry

This is primarily for Sherry re her last post.Feel free to relay what I have said.

I am assuming you have been through a similar experience to me.

Please do not let things smash up your soul. I recall a recent dream where my Dad and Grandad
were in the high rise building where I was placed as a volunteer for the homeless when 19 years old.
There was a tornado ourside.Ir had electrical sparks> I said "I can walk through this" but maybe not.

When I was a child being cared for after my mother committed that act I used to dream of big snakes in the grass in the beautiful back garden of my grandparents working class home.

Apparently my mothers dad who she registered dead
was a radio operator in the RAF in World War 2. The emblem is a fist holding a shower of sparks-who knows?

I feel that I should never have been born, that my life is cursed even thoough I have been recognised as achieving things for others. This week I have been on the absolute edge but still here.

Plath's sons death has triggered lots of stories inclu7ding one in the guardian(UK) newspaper where a mother is seen looking lovingly at her child prior to suicide. I would love that photo regarding me but do not have it, It does not exist.

When I discovered everything I went to the cemetary where my mother was cremated and wrote beautiful loving words. I have since had doubts but stand by those words because even though she may not have really loved me when she did that tragic thing time changes thigs as it has for me.

Sherry, I do not know your issues but all I wil say is I have veered from being victim to a very combatative fighter fort the homeless, for the otdinary people suffering poverty right now.

Talk to your therapist but get your own strength from your experiences

Take Care

Rob W

Rob,
Thanks for the conversation. I love it when that happens here.

My resonances come from my mother's several attempts to murder me when I was an infant and again, over a period of several months, when I was 7. There's not any doubt that my mother certainly didn't want or like me--she wanted me dead. There were other modes of abuse, but it seems to be the murder attempts that rattle around in my soul. I have always had the feeling I'm on probation on this planet, that I'm not supposed to be here.

I used to have dreams that I was in a cocktail party, very swank. I'd been invited, but at some point the invitation had been rescinded. I didn't hear the news, for some reason, and now here I was, trying desperately to find my way through the crowd and out of the room before my presence openly offended anyone. At some point I realized how incredibly rude it is to make someone feel so unwelcome *after* you've issued an invitation and they're one their way and unable to return to their place of origin.

I have come to the conclusion that the feelings and actions our parents display towards us so often really have nothing to do with us. Frequently one child is favoured over another, not because of any intrinsic traits but merely because the parents' marriage was in a better place at the time that child was born.

My guess is your mother was so consumed by her depression she simply had nothing to give. It's almost impossible to concern yourself with someone else when you are drowning yourself. You probably know that now, as an adult. But as an infant, no, you didn't. You couldn't. It did, indeed, leave that dark splinter in your soul.

In my case my parents were both extremely narcissistic. They were like large three-years olds, basically. My father left and my mother became convinced if she could get rid of me he'd come back. Of course, even when we lived with the modulating force that was my grandparents, she made her loathing of my sister and I very clear. Who we were as people, of course, had nothing to do with the emotions she projected upon us.

I trust you realize, in your left brain--or wherever it is we keep our logical thinking--that the sense of "not supposed to be here" is a lie. Or, more likely, the only defense an infant would have. But gee, it's so hard not to believe that lie. My little person is still in there, still taking fuzzy snapshots of the world. I don't know how to connect with her. So I'm going back to see this woman I've known for 30 years. I'm a very annoying client, I'm sure. But the one thing I know is that she actually, really does care about me. This time I have some specific goals, something a little more concrete than "I wanna feel better." I know my dark splinter concerns those months in a closet at the age of 7.

Any time you find yourself believing in those lies, Rob, please feel free to drop me a line. My e-mail is duckladynh at yahoo.com.

I spent several years, by the way, doing advocacy and public speaking, organizing clinician trainings and survivor events and editing a newsletter by and for survivors of incest and childhood sexual abuse. It was a wonderful thing to do with my rage, less lucrative but still much better than, say, robbing banks. After 7 years of it I was feeling a bit better and went home to plant a garden.

Thank you so much for sharing your feelings. Invariably, when I've been in survivor groups, someone always comes to me and says "You just described exactly how I feel about _____. Thank you so much." After a while I accepted that this happened and that it meant a lot to people. I never knew why. Now I do. Thank you so much for putting such eloquent words to my feelings.

Sherry (who apologizes for going on and on)

According to "Her Husband" by Diane Middlebrook, Sylvia Plath was on the antidepressant Parnate, which she began taking the week of February 4th, 1963...she died February 11th, 1963. The Practitioner's Guide to Psychoactive Drugs, 2nd Edition states that "Parnate is a monoamine oxidase inhibitor with the generic name tranylcypromine which "often produce(s) clinical improvement within about ten days."

I know what you describe is fact cos you are so "Matter of fact" about it. When these things happen the description to others is deadpan. It has to be because admitting the wild emotions beneath would be like pullling a pin on a nuclear hand grenade. Once it's pulled it cannot be put back-what's more you cannot "Unexplode" it once it has gone off. When you have lived with this crap and you finally embrace the awful memories people look at you differently.

When the fragmentation bomb goes off people look at you as if to say "Well can't you just run after all the bits and put them back together" in other words-be as you were , but you cannot be ther same. You never were the same. Your whole life was a frantic search for a dreadful truth. If you think it will get better once you know it think again. This is just the next stage.

What happenned to you was a million times worse than my experience. You talk of the fight between the logical and illogical sections of this.Basically I just want to love my mummy's memory. I am so tired of mixed feelings after she committed suicide.My grandparents loved me so much, you want heroes, they were it.

I hope to others in this forum that this gives an idea of what might have been going on in Nick Plath's mind-one minute you want to die-next you have a purpose-you want to give to this planet, you know how much things are precious as opposed to those who take for granted.At this point I think my days are done but I wrestle and will probably get up tommorrow and want to fight the power!!

Sherry , I may well be in touch.

RW

Folks, let us be less critical with one another. It is true that we should not speculate on a disease, however we do know that when one desides to end his or her life there is excruciating pain that is a motivator. Is that abnormal brain chemistry...YES!. Any body disorder affects the brain chemistry, and each differently. Pyroluria is real, and it effects the BRAIN, allopathic research papers state this to be a known fact for years....tell the drug companies.
www.pyroluria.wordpress.com
Ignorance produces the same.