"Darkness within the entertainment industry"

[Seano]

Grim reading:

www.theage.com.au - clicky

[paulears]

I suspect flawed research. In my entire life, I have personally known two people who took their own lives, and one who tried. None of these were in the entertainments sector. I have three good friends who have had mental health issues at some point, one is in entertainment. On numbers, my experience is pretty good. Seano - maybe add a survey and see if other people have similar or different experiences? Perhaps worthy of some thought?

[kerry davies]

It could be coincidence or "clustering" but whatever it may be needs further research if the anecdotal numbers are correct. I think there is an element of "chicken and egg" and one question should be; does showbiz attract people with more than "addictive personality" (we know it does) as a mental health issue or do the conditions and exploitative nature of the industry cause those mental health issues?

 

It is pretty much a given that wages and conditions are poor and the research shows that most people abandon the creative sector in their late thirties to have such luxuries as family, home and regular meals. BL itself shows the latter since we have an endless stream of newbies who vanish without trace in a relatively short time. There must be tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of arts and arts technical graduates out there so where are they all?

 

It could also be the "You never see one of those these days .... oh look, there's three of 'em," syndrome. As an alkie I have known dozens die of drink, another one last month, but I doubt that many on BL have noticed more than one, if that. Whatever it may be there is a need for further investigation if only to ascertain the existence and scale of any possible anomaly in the industry.

 

A new topic for dissertation perhaps? I don't however look forward to the first newbie survey asking how many of us have;

A) Considered suicide.

B) Attempted suicide.

C) Successfully committed suicide.

[paulears]

or in my case, got a verbal warning for dealing with it "without adequate protection, placing myself and the college corporation at risk". stards.

[litemog]

I suspect flawed research. In my entire life, I have personally known two people who took their own lives, and one who tried. None of these were in the entertainments sector. I have three good friends who have had mental health issues at some point, one is in entertainment. On numbers, my experience is pretty good. Seano - maybe add a survey and see if other people have similar or different experiences? Perhaps worthy of some thought?

 

Whilst on the other hand, I have known four people who took their own lives, one was an artist, two worked in theatre and the other had a very strong connection to it. Which I guess indicates the unreliability of anecdotal research. I would certainly concur with the point in the article about performers needing to have particular sensitivity to do their job, but at the same time being in an industry that can be a very cut throat and unforgiving place to work.

 

The idea of the tortured genius may be a bit of cliché, but there does seem to be a relationship between great creativity and what might be termed mental health issues. I was once described by a set designer as the sanest person they knew in theatre. They were possibly right, but I have often wondered whether this has inhibited my creative achievements.

 

 

 

[Junior8]

All research into suicide must be flawed since the successful are not here to give their reasons. Leaving anecdotal evidence to one side statistics do seem to suggest some causal factors, the first really structured attempt to identify these being Durkheim's 1890s analysis of figures up to that date. He identifies a number of groups with higher rates but more importantly posited the notion that far from being a merely personal act suicide could be influenced by social relationships and might increase as societies became more complex. In particular he saw a link between the lack of what he termed social cohesion in modern industrial societies which are far more fragmented, he reckoned, than pre-industrial ones. Despite the fact that this thesis has been heavily criticised in recent times the idea that 'isolation in a crowd' might have something to do with things does exercise some common-sense appeal. I have only one personal experience of suicide but the experience that has stayed with me is that of a colleague around twenty years ago who was making his way up the refereeing tree in a major sport and took leave to officiate in a tournament in Brazil where success could have turned things into a full time job. He came back from that two or three weeks living in a hotel room necessarily isolated very severely troubled and gave the refereeing up immediately but it was some months before I thought of him as mentally fit again. Following that experience I am not inclined to write the Australian research off out of hand. Also there may be things about Australian culture, using the term in the Sociological sense, that may have an influence too.