From Vincent van Gogh to Diane Arbus, many artists have ended their careers with suicide.
But what if they had survived the attempt? The insight that an artist who survives suicide can bring is beyond what medical experts or loved ones can tell us. These are people who have been there and returned to tell the tale.
The depression that can lead to suicide is often considered a creative catalyst but it is also a destroyer of lives. Virginia Woolf wrote in her last note to her husband before taking her own life: ‘I don’t think two people could have been happier until this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know.’
