Like Mother, Like Son: Sylvia Plath's Son Commits Suicide
Forty-six years after "The Bell Jar" author Sylvia Plath committed suicide by gassing herself while he slept in another room, her son, Nicholas Hughes has also chosen to take his own life.
On Sunday, his sister Frieda told The Times that Hughes had hanged himself on March 16 at his Alaskan home after a long battle with depression.
Hughes was 47, unmarried and had no children. He was a professor of fisheries and ocean sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
He was just a baby when his mother killed herself in response to her husband, poet Ted Hughes, having left her for the wife of another poet. Plath, as a struggling single mother of two young children. eventually went through a mental collapse and committed suicide. Rather ironically, Hughes' mistress, Assia Wevill, also gassed herself and her child six years later.
Could Hughes' death have been due to an inherited tendency towards depression and suicidal urges? Research does indicate that depression is, at least in part, due to genetic inheritance, so Hughes may well have inherited his tendency towards depression from his mother. One has to wonder though what effect his environment - having a mother who died by her own hand while he was just a baby - might have had on him.
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I beleive suicide to be carried through the gene pool and also through the psyhcological passage in family tree’s. Although i have no family history, since being diagnosed with Bipolar i have spent many hour’s over the last 5yrs thinking about committing suicide.It’s all to do with the depression and if one of my family had suicided i’m sure it would have made my decision in the negative.
My mother has struggled with depression for well over 30 years, She attempted suicide when I was very young. Although I didn’t know about that, by the time I was 12, my own battle with depression had begun, and I had attempted suicide at least 2 times.
I believe there is certainly a genetic predisposition towards depression, and suicidal thoughts/tendancies often run hand in hand with severe depression. In my case, the suicide attempts, at least, were not because I saw my mother do it, but the idea came from my own self hatred and misery.
I don’t doubt, however, that the legacy of actual successful suicide is far stronger, and given a situation where a parent commits suicide, their children are at greater risk.
There is depression in my mother and
also in her children. Is there a link?
Because we were raised in it without knowing,
have we absorbed a negative way of dealing
with life events?. Because the children
were focused so much on the parent’s
problems, did we not learn how to deal with our own? And was that the legacy that
my mother had with her mother?.
Self-worth, self-care – these can be
transformed with an understanding
transformational arts counsellor.
Ever since the proliferation of reality tyoe crime solving shows on TV, fewer people are able to murder someone and get away with it. As a result, some suicides have turned out to be murders because of new technologies in evidence gathering.
I read that Hughes’s mistress and her child committed suicide as did his first wife. I think the case of all their deaths should be reopened, especially if there are newer forensic techniques to better determine if the “gasor” was not the same as the “gasee”. That’s my opinion, I could be wrong.
Whoops, time for a nap. In these tough times, we victims of depression who own our own businesses, need to remember our slogan: “The more naps you take, the more money you make.”
Absolutely, suicidal behavior and depressive disorders run in families. Wish the mental health research funding would focus on learning more about this. My maternal grandfather, a paternal aunt and maternal cousin all committed suicide. I made attempts and both my parents had serious major depressive episodes as well as two of my four siblings. I worry for my son, of course. Saving graces: our religious faith and very effective antidepressants. Compliance with treatment is essential. Willpower and trying to be tough will not do it. My spiritual reliance keeps me positive. Relatives years ago did not seem to have either of these supports.
Although I have always struggled with depression, it is only been in the last few years that I have thought seriously of suicide. However, when I read about the aftermath of killing yourself upon the family, I change my mind.
Lord Buddha said that we are born to suffer.
We suffer because we and our parents are ignorant of the laws of our minds.
With the proper education of the laws with which our mind works, we can have a pretty good life and we can be very proud of our birth as a human being.
In our lives we always have some problems and some happiness on every day of our life.
When we let the pain accumulate in our mind, we feel the pain in our heart and then in our Soul.
When the pain reaches at the door of our soul and we find it very difficult to tolerate that pain, we think of shutting our doors towards our life.It is very similar to a man jumping of a building when his apartment is on fire.
We call this suicide.
In this world of our human compassion and the words of Jesus Christ and Sai Baba, we should love all and hurt no one and if we could help our brothers and sisters as a collective Consciousness, no one should have a need for suicide.
We can ask our Father, Allah, Rama for forgiveness and we shall be forgiven for any act of sin that we have committed. We may have to be responsible for our penance if needed, but deliverance is an unconditional gift of our Father.
As we have read in the epic of Ramayana, if the Ravana the devil were to ask God for forgiveness He would do so for even the devil.
My brothers and sisters, we are not even close to that devil. We have done mistakes because we were lead in the wrong path by some one we admired.
Let us keep a tab on every one we meet and see if they all have an easy smile on their faces.
Why God does not keep incarnating every ten years of human life is because He expects human beings to help other human beings.
We have to help others when we can so that they can help us when we are in quick sand.
After many years of purgatory, we get a human birth. Let no one ever think of suicide.
May I help you?
Ramesh.
I do not think that suicide is genetic . It is certainnely a learned behaviour to problem solving.
No suicide is never a familial tendency although depression is surely.