Suicide in the news: psychiatrist/neuroscientist Dr.Nolan Williams

[LaVieEnRose]

I just came across this news randomly although I had never heard of him. It's terribly sad of course but at the risk of sounding crude I found it noteworthy enough to share here to get everybody's impressions.

Here's an article among many reporting it:

IN MEMORIAM: Nolan R. Williams, MD - Neuropsychopharmacology

www.nature.com

My thoughts:

Physician suicide is nothing extraordinary sadly but you don't have to be possessed of a particularly discerning mind to grasp the irony of a psychiatrist killing himself. Especially since this man apparently was very instrumental and passionate about developing new treatments for depression and other mental illnesses.

Did he try what he developed at all? Did he not believe in them for himself?

As an aside, personally I don't know what it is like to be depressed in conventionally "happy" circumstances.

 

[itsgone2]

This is insane. Read the bio. It's each item is more impressive than my entire career.

And yet he still goes. Even with a wife and kids. It doesn't seem possible.

 

[astr4]

there are people out there with everything you've ever dreamed of having but are still miserable and suicidal for one reason or another. it's always really jarring to me.

i think death haunts some of us no matter what we do, and it calls for us from the other side. l'appel du vide. i guess that's what they call depression.

people like anthony bourdain or kim jonghyun or this guy, they all seem so successful and they can't even be happy and want to be alive? damn. what hope is there for me? i don't have any of that going for me… seems i'm destined to die too.

 

[madwoman]

Even though I don't want to go in depth why I want to CTB to the people that know me (I plan to leave a overall basic reason without major details which I haven't even scratched the surface on here) but I'm so curious after someone commits about hearing the details of why and how they truly felt. Some of the things he had are some of the many reasons I want to go - success, helping others in a big way/leaving an impact, having adventurous hobbies which I can only picture happy full of life people doing, and a partner (and family I don't want kids but he had that). I know there's so much to a person and depression is brain chemistry too and all and at the end of the day we don't know what we all really battle but it's just hard to imagine people CTB when they seem to have a good life. I don't know if anyone would think any of that for me, but idk so much to think about. We are all human and have to live our life being who we are and sometimes we just can't anymore.

 

[U. A.]

there are people out there with everything you've ever dreamed of having but are still miserable and suicidal for one reason or another.

There's this one-panel comic of something like a Buddhist monk being hovered over by an unhappy-looking waitstaff at a restaurant, smiling, with the text below indicating him saying "Change comes from within"...

This imo is what's misguided about a pretty significant number of people's ideas of living well (and inherently escaping suicide drive). Articulating the degree to which this is applicable is beyond my sleep-deprived brain—whether it's only really for people who feel like "failures" and/or lack of fulfillment derived from social approval, or all the way to people with intractable, debilitating chronic illness—but generally the pursuit of "getting" leads nowhere, especially not to fulfillment. The problem isn't that you are not getting or don't have something, but that you want it (and no I'm not talking about physiological needs like sustenance and fundamental affection/intimacy [the absence of the latter of which tend to sting worse when absent in formative years]) because as we all know, even after you eat you get hungry again. After you drink you get thirsty again. After you sleep you get tired again.

BPD may be an example of how it is the nature of the feeling of need for validation that is the issue, rather than the presence or absence of validation itself (conjecture, but speaking to something many here seem to experience).

 

[socksnsandles]

for all we know he could have been dealing with a shit ton of health problems

 

[BlueberryDeer]

I think no one is inmune to suicidal thoughts. Whatever if someone do it or not, it depends of the circumstances.
Resolving the inner void(S) varies from person to person, country by country, economic context, gender context, and so on.
Perhaps this doctor have some voids that he was ashamed to talk about it because he was supposed to be a kind of authority to figure it out.

 

[cowboypants]

It's a sad news, and he seemed to have worked in Stanford so must be really good. That aside, Neuroscience as a field is said to be the youngest of sciences. So we have a long way to go indeed

 

[breathingblues]

there are people out there with everything you've ever dreamed of having but are still miserable and suicidal for one reason or another. it's always really jarring to me.

i think death haunts some of us no matter what we do, and it calls for us from the other side. l'appel du vide. i guess that's what they call depression.

people like anthony bourdain or kim jonghyun or this guy, they all seem so successful and they can't even be happy and want to be alive? damn. what hope is there for me? i don't have any of that going for me… seems i'm destined to die too.

you know it's not so different with me. I can be successful later than sooner but life is just so torturous and I know the demons won't leave me ever in my life. This world is a sewer.

The thing is successful people too are haunted by demons and monsters in the mind, more so than "normal" people. In fact when you're higher you're more vulnerable, and you see successful people doing weird and sometimes evil things.

Thing with this man is psychiatry is demonic. You're numbing and driving people insane for money. See Dr. Josef (YouTube) or the endless reports of violent crime because of the similarly endless psychiatric treatment gone wrong. When the brain is numbed into violence and hatred, and you do it to endless people for money, really in my opinion that is a very strong reason to die. Psychiatry only has a veil of medicine, and pill research is absurdly manipulated more often than not.

 

[OnMyLast Legs]

This is insane. Read the bio. It's each item is more impressive than my entire career.

And yet he still goes. Even with a wife and kids. It doesn't seem possible.

Exactly my thoughts. If successful people can go by suicide, why not my stinky shut-in ass?

 

[OzymandiAsh]

I just came across this news randomly although I had never heard of him. It's terribly sad of course but at the risk of sounding crude I found it noteworthy enough to share here to get everybody's impressions.

Here's an article among many reporting it:

IN MEMORIAM: Nolan R. Williams, MD - Neuropsychopharmacology

www.nature.com

My thoughts:

Physician suicide is nothing extraordinary sadly but you don't have to be possessed of a particularly discerning mind to grasp the irony of a psychiatrist killing himself. Especially since this man apparently was very instrumental and passionate about developing new treatments for depression and other mental illnesses.

Did he try what he developed at all? Did he not believe in them for himself?

As an aside, personally I don't know what it is like to be depressed in conventionally "happy" circumstances.

I've known this for a while ever since watching the documentary In Waves and War on Netflix, which focuses on US Navy SEALs and their attempts to treat PTSD and trauma through Ibogaine, and features Dr. Nolan Williams.

I don't get it tbh, seemed like he had a successful and happy life. I don't think people in that position should CTB, especially if they're also parents. His wife was also a psychiatrist. I think he should have carried on and tried different treatments, but only God knows and can judge. RIP

 

[ClownWorld2023]

Physician suicide is nothing extraordinary sadly but you don't have to be possessed of a particularly discerning mind to grasp the irony of a psychiatrist killing himself. Especially since this man apparently was very instrumental and passionate about developing new treatments for depression and other mental illnesses.

Did he try what he developed at all? Did he not believe in them for himself?

As an aside, personally I don't know what it is like to be depressed in conventionally "happy" circumstances.

I think he sounded like a good person.
I think there are many people in the mental health field that are actually bad or even horrible people, having met a few of them myself, that actually should have never gotten into that field.

I think this man is not one of them.

 

[badatparties]

Psychiatrists are just people and have problems too. They aren't immune from the things they try to treat people for.

 

[SarahThrowsGin]

Not surprised at all: neuroscience's view of how our minds work is fatalism on steroids, and I have to just pull off the leap of faith to deny all of it so that I can choose meaning for my live and the possibility of consciousness without a body. If I believed what neuroscience says is true, I would go pro-death instead of pro-choice because that is not a life but torture and indignity. So I totally believe he would kill himself, and that in general psychiatrists - but especially neuroscientists - have the least reasons to live if they believe in what they practice and preach.

I am not religious in conventional sense, by the way (due to religious trauma), but for me to enjoy any piece of life (those moments that happen not to suck) is only possible by believing in free will and in that consciousness does not live in the brain, but brain merely like has a router to receive it like computer receives Internet, and execute instructions. The fact that damage to brain yields impossible for it to convey consciousness does not mean anything in my opinion, it only means that either link is severed or the biology and chemistry can no longer perform what it is commanded to perform.

 

[LaVieEnRose]

Psychiatrists are just people and have problems too. They aren't immune from the things they try to treat people for.

Of course but it's still very disturbing. This is different from any other doctor dying of a disease they are trying to treat. In any event they may be people in the end but they also have expertise and perspective that most people aren't going to have.