Vincent van Gogh and Bipolar Disorder Introduction: Vincent van Gogh is one of history’s most renowned painters yet has never been considered the most mentally stable artist. Many people are familiar with the story of Van Gogh chopping off his own ear and later committing suicide. Although many artists have been considered to have suffered from mental disorders, such as Edvard Munch (GAD and hallucinations), Jackson Pollock (depression and substance-abuse), and Michelangelo (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) (Adams 2014), Van Gogh seems to stick out among the crowd mainly because of the absurdity of him cutting off his own ear. It is common to hear someone refer to Van Gogh as being “mad” or “crazy” despite the fact that he was never …show more content…
519). Suddenly, without much warning, he dropped everything related to dealing art and became extremely involved in religion. According to Blumer, Van Gogh lived and breathed evangelism during this time and devoted four years of his life to the practice of becoming a preacher (p. 519-520). Although this might not have been his first clinically defined episode of hypomania, I believe this radical change in interests and goal-directed behavior might have been a sign of the onset of Bipolar 2. As Van Gogh got older, more and more symptoms of Bipolar 2 emerged. Van Gogh left the church and decided to become an artist at the age of 27 and his mental health seemed to diminish greatly from here until the end of his life at the age of 37. While reading Blumer’s article, it became apparent that his first clear hypomanic episode occurred after he moved to Arles, France. In letters he was writing to his older brother, Theo, Van Gogh described his feverish painting, heightened emotions, and excessive consumption of absinthe (Blumer, 2002). I classify this as a hypomanic episode because it lasted less than a week and meets the requirement of showing three or more symptoms: feverishly painting would fall under an increase in goal-directed behavior, heightened emotions under either inflated self-esteem or
The article “Bipolar Disorder: The Agony and the Ecstasy” by Thomas Wheaton explains what it is like living and dealing with Bipolar. Bipolar is a mental health condition typified by mood swings between gushing euphoria and draining depression. Luckily, there are medications and therapy to help someone cope with the disorder. For example, Trazodone it will help a person sleep at night and Xanax, which is for panic attacks. The side effects are that people tend to be dizzy, light headed, heat-sensitive and their mouths will be dry from some of them. In contrast, to not taking them it would be worse for them. There were times where he was depressed to point where he thought about killing himself both when he was six years old and then again when
In Marbles, Ellen Forney shares the story of an artist’s struggle with the effects of bipolar disorder on her abilities. Initially afraid of confronting the possibility that choosing to control her condition may extinguish her creativity, Forney chooses to isolate her experience from those of others. This fear and the resulting loneliness being unsustainable, Forney eventually makes the decision to explore the work of others and finds comfort in their experiences. Ultimately, she constructs her own work as a form of therapy that can help her come to terms with her own bipolar disorder, definitively resolving the question of whether it is possible to be a stable yet creative artist. In this context, Forney theorizes her memoir as a form of company in order to embrace her unrelenting condition as being an essential part of her identity.
The two major types of Bipolar Disorder (BPD) set out in this paper are Bipolar 1 and 2. Bipolar 1 is diagnosed as guide lined by the DSM5. As the occurrence of a least one maniac episode preceding or post an episode of hypomania and/or Major depression. The DSM 5 highlights that Bipolar 2 is diagnosed by one major depressive episode in occurrence with one hypomanic episode with an absence of Mania. (Association:, 2013) Mania as defined by DSM5: “A distinct period of abnormally and persistently elevated, expansive, or irritable mood and abnormally and persistently increased goal-directed activity or energy, lasting at least 1 week and present most of the day, nearly every day.” Hypomania being: “A distinct period of abnormally and
In pop culture Bipolar Disorder is described as someone quickly switching emotions. The term gets flown around easily without evidence of the alleged diagnosis. This publication changed my perspective on mental illness due to always hearing society's opinion on the phrase. Kay’s experience shows an individual who suffered tremendously behind doors that no one else could relate to, having episodes last days to months not switching every minute like society's stereotypes. It is obvious that there is not control and while medication helps, there is a significant consequence when missing treatment. Additionally, material learned within this book can help fundamentally determine someone suffering this illness. For example, if someone has manic highs and lows that force them to change their daily lifestyle for a period of time and developes changing impulsive decisions there could be an underlying illness. Even though there are few details that can fall into the category of Bipolar, it is still rare and unless diagnosed by a doctor one should never jump to conclusions about another
story in a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, in an attempt to shed some light and insight on the
When you think of Vincent Van Gogh, you may just think of “that dude that cut off his ear”, but he is much more than that. Van Gogh was a multidimensional person despite of his mental illnesses. Through his art, Van Gogh helped raise awareness of mental health. The status of Van Gogh’s mental health was shown through various pieces of art that he made throughout his life. Vincent Van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853 in Brabant, Holland to a Protestant family.
He then tricks everyone into thinking he lost his mind by acting strange towards everyone. These actions show Bipolar Disorder because he goes from
The story of Vincent Van Gogh’s life was filled with mental issues as well as artistic issues. Towards the end of the year in 1881, the first signs of Van Gogh’s mental illness began to take hold. He suffered various types of epilepsy, psychotic attacks, and delusions. One episode entailed Vincent cutting off and mutilating his own ear. The story behind that is quite interesting.
There is no indication she has had a manic or hypomanic episode. Her depression may be complicated by grief due to her father’s death one year ago. Her symptoms seem to get worse after his passing.
High doses of thujone will also cause a person to see objects in yellow, which may also be the reason why he loved the color yellow. Yet, due to Van Gogh’s extreme commitment to religion, and enthusiastic speed in this art pieces, many doctors also assumed Van Gogh could have been bipolar. Van Gogh’s episodes were always followed by exhaustion, and depression, and eventually suicide (Meier-Graefe 46). Therefore, bipolar may be a logical reason of Van Gogh’s mental condition. Though, there may have been many arguments of Gogh’s mental condition, there is still a final agreement that throughout his Van Gogh still created intriguing art for the world to see.
In Van Gogh’s piece of art “Prisoners Exercising” (1890) is shown sadness, depression, and despair of the prisoners. You can say that prisoners are also hopeless, by how the artist drew faces of some of the prisoners. The artist used black, gray, dark blue, brown and dull orange colors, these colors make you feel sad and distressed. By looking at this painting and the colours that were used we can say that Van Gogh was feeling depressed and he had a life crisis. I believe that the artist’s message that he wanted to deliver is, this is how life can look like, making circles in a small room, loneliness, being controlled by other people who are watching your each and every step that you take. Maybe he wanted to show how people look like when they are freedomless.
A person may have bipolar if they have had episodes of depression as well as mania, without taking any substances that may trigger these symptons. This paper will focused mostly on Bipolar II since Virginia Woolf would b diagnosed with it if she were alive today.
Before I truly understood Bipolar disorder, it was still a fairly common word in my vocabulary. Anytime I thought someone was being moody or fluctuating between emotions, I joked by claiming that person to be bipolar. Several incidents of this involved one of my roommates who seemed to be happy one day, and quite the polar opposite the next. However, it was not until my clinical experience on the psychiatric unit that I realized what true bipolar disorder was, and that she did not fit the criteria. Even though I always thought my roommate was bipolar, I quickly found after being exposed to a diagnosed bipolar patient that my roommate was instead just moody. I decided to write this paper on bipolar disorder, not because I have struggle with it or know a friend or family member with this disease, but because I had several misconceptions about what it entailed.