The True Lesson from Anthony Bourdain’s Suicide
The media have been replete with articles extolling the life, liveliness, and productivity of Anthony Bourdain. His death is surely a tragedy, a major loss to all who admired his spunk, energy and creativity. Most articles express shock and bewilderment that a man so successful, who achieved heights he’d not dreamed of, could have taken his life. His death has also spawned a wrenching postmortem which has included frequent calls for those ridden by suicidal thoughts to reach out for help, and for significant others to ask when suicidal thoughts are suspected.
These recommendations are welcome, but they are thin soup. General education is massively deficient in providing even the most basic knowledge about a subject we all deal with 24/7: behavioral health. In my op-ed article “Teach the Three R’s…and P for Psychology”(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2014), I noted that half of our population carry diagnosable psychiatric conditions. However, only 30 percent of those afflicted ever get to see a behavioral health clinician. My article also laid bare the truism that the failure to seek or receive appropriate treatment is not borne entirely out of stigma, but more importantly from plain and simple ignorance of the subject. As a result, most people harboring significant psychiatric symptoms view them not as treatable medical problems (whose elimination will enhance their functioning considerably), but rather as “just me,” as if their symptoms are hard baked into their personalities. This viewpoint is dangerously mistaken, and it results in failure to seek change, continued poor functioning, lower incomes, worsened physical illness, higher medical care costs, emotional turmoil, and, yes, suicide as well. It is imperative for all to have a basic conceptual framework and understanding of internal mental and interpersonal phenomena. Whether we or our significant others are hobbled by psychiatric symptoms or not, it behooves us as well to understand non-pathological psychological issues with which we must all cope day by day, hour by hour. Absent such knowledge, absent an understanding of psychological concepts and a behavioral vocabulary, we can only be rendered helpless and floundering in a chaos of emotional confusion.
I am a practicing psychiatrist, and likely, therefore, more adept at behavioral diagnosis. But I will also argue that the descriptions of behavioral conditions, and the study of personality, of intrapsychic and interpersonal phenomena, by no means requires admission to Phi Beta Kappa. Much of this information is easily taught and apprehended; our educational system has been blind to the crying need to address this most important subject, perhaps amongst the most impactful on our daily lives. So, what might one have observed about Anthony Bourdain, gleaned entirely from “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” He was ”bigger than life, “ over the top. He seemed to have an insatiable “appetite” for life. He was on the go a great deal, moving from place to place, perhaps restless. He could be vulgar, even on TV, suggesting an underlying irritability. He was a risk taker , including when it came to his eating. He had a history of drug abuse. He was warm, but also perhaps a tad grandiose. And I assume that the TV production only allowed for the tips of his iceberg to show.
None of this is meant to diss this wonderful man. In fact, persons who carry these traits are often those who are the risk takers the rest of us are not. They are the ones who , some have wisely observed, advance our human culture in powerful ways(think astronauts, explorers, artists, scientists). This exercise is meant only to illustrate that even through the prism of the TV screen one can discern possible symptoms which might in turn raise our level of concern for, among other things, dangerous behaviors.
And, rather than rely on the superficial recommendation to query those we suspect could be harboring thoughts of self harm, here are a longer list of objective risk factors for suicide which, especially in combination, should truly raise our suspicion and lead us to actively intervene: maleness; social isolation; older age; alcohol abuse; drug abuse; hopelessness; talk of suicide or “dark thoughts; recent discharge from a psychiatric facility; writing a will recently; going on the “vacation of my life”; recent divorce or deaths; history of prior attempts; family history of suicide; suicide in close friends or in an adolescent social group; depression; bipolar disorder; borderline personality disorder; becoming considerably more energized in the springtime or after starting a standard antidepressant. An older depressed man, recently divorced, isolated socially, who has little to no contact with his children, who has taken to drinking or drugs, might therefore be at objective risk for suicide, and should command our attention and concern.
I have only touched the surface of the wonderful potential to be realized when behavioral health is given its due in school curricula. I look forward to educators picking up the mantle of this endeavor so we may all be better able to observe irregularities in ourselves and in our significant others, and to develop a conceptual framework to make comprehensible what for most of us are currently inscrutable behavioral experiences and symptoms.
The media have been replete with articles extolling the life, liveliness, and productivity of Anthony Bourdain. His death is surely a tragedy, a major loss to all who admired his spunk, energy and creativity. Most articles express shock and bewilderment that a man so successful, who achieved heights he’d not dreamed of, could have taken his life. His death has also spawned a wrenching postmortem which has included frequent calls for those ridden by suicidal thoughts to reach out for help, and for significant others to ask when suicidal thoughts are suspected.
These recommendations are welcome, but they are thin soup. General education is massively deficient in providing even the most basic knowledge about a subject we all deal with 24/7: behavioral health. In my op-ed article “Teach the Three R’s…and P for Psychology”(Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, July 2014), I noted that half of our population carry diagnosable psychiatric conditions. However, only 30 percent of those afflicted ever get to see a behavioral health clinician. My article also laid bare the truism that the failure to seek or receive appropriate treatment is not borne entirely out of stigma, but more importantly from plain and simple ignorance of the subject. As a result, most people harboring significant psychiatric symptoms view them not as treatable medical problems (whose elimination will enhance their functioning considerably), but rather as “just me,” as if their symptoms are hard baked into their personalities. This viewpoint is dangerously mistaken, and it results in failure to seek change, continued poor functioning, lower incomes, worsened physical illness, higher medical care costs, emotional turmoil, and, yes, suicide as well. It is imperative for all to have a basic conceptual framework and understanding of internal mental and interpersonal phenomena. Whether we or our significant others are hobbled by psychiatric symptoms or not, it behooves us as well to understand non-pathological psychological issues with which we must all cope day by day, hour by hour. Absent such knowledge, absent an understanding of psychological concepts and a behavioral vocabulary, we can only be rendered helpless and floundering in a chaos of emotional confusion.
I am a practicing psychiatrist, and likely, therefore, more adept at behavioral diagnosis. But I will also argue that the descriptions of behavioral conditions, and the study of personality, of intrapsychic and interpersonal phenomena, by no means requires admission to Phi Beta Kappa. Much of this information is easily taught and apprehended; our educational system has been blind to the crying need to address this most important subject, perhaps amongst the most impactful on our daily lives. So, what might one have observed about Anthony Bourdain, gleaned entirely from “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.” He was ”bigger than life, “ over the top. He seemed to have an insatiable “appetite” for life. He was on the go a great deal, moving from place to place, perhaps restless. He could be vulgar, even on TV, suggesting an underlying irritability. He was a risk taker , including when it came to his eating. He had a history of drug abuse. He was warm, but also perhaps a tad grandiose. And I assume that the TV production only allowed for the tips of his iceberg to show.
None of this is meant to diss this wonderful man. In fact, persons who carry these traits are often those who are the risk takers the rest of us are not. They are the ones who , some have wisely observed, advance our human culture in powerful ways(think astronauts, explorers, artists, scientists). This exercise is meant only to illustrate that even through the prism of the TV screen one can discern possible symptoms which might in turn raise our level of concern for, among other things, dangerous behaviors.
And, rather than rely on the superficial recommendation to query those we suspect could be harboring thoughts of self harm, here are a longer list of objective risk factors for suicide which, especially in combination, should truly raise our suspicion and lead us to actively intervene: maleness; social isolation; older age; alcohol abuse; drug abuse; hopelessness; talk of suicide or “dark thoughts; recent discharge from a psychiatric facility; writing a will recently; going on the “vacation of my life”; recent divorce or deaths; history of prior attempts; family history of suicide; suicide in close friends or in an adolescent social group; depression; bipolar disorder; borderline personality disorder; becoming considerably more energized in the springtime or after starting a standard antidepressant. An older depressed man, recently divorced, isolated socially, who has little to no contact with his children, who has taken to drinking or drugs, might therefore be at objective risk for suicide, and should command our attention and concern.
I have only touched the surface of the wonderful potential to be realized when behavioral health is given its due in school curricula. I look forward to educators picking up the mantle of this endeavor so we may all be better able to observe irregularities in ourselves and in our significant others, and to develop a conceptual framework to make comprehensible what for most of us are currently inscrutable behavioral experiences and symptoms.
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