Winston Churchill who suffered bipolar depression. He used a euphemism to conceal his mental illness. He called it "The Black Dog." But there are those who believe he didn't really use the term.
In the movie Casablanca Humphrey Bogart never said , "Play it again Sam" though dozens of comedians have said he said it exactly the way he would have said it had he said it. The 'black-dog' was bipolar depression which plagued Winston Churchill throughout his life...but, "His last private secretary, after 1952, Anthony Montague Browne [1977]...published Long Sunset, a memoir. [In it he said] "he 'corrected' erroneous characterizations of Churchill [one of which was]...he never mentioned Black Dog" (Rasor, Winston Churchill, 2000, p. 225). Yet Blake and Louis (eds. Churchill, 1996, p 492) either extends the myth or refutes it with, "He was always subject to bouts of 'black-dog' depression, the threat of which became greater as his life moved to a stage when windows were more likely to close than to open." But whether or not he said it, Winston Churchill had it and as the preceding page reflects, I'm ashamed to say, the British public, party members on all sides, and the media believe the statue portraying this reality to be an insult to a great man.
When Winston Churchill was in his eighties he fell out of bed and broke his hip. This was generally reported, cartoons were drawn of it even, but there was no shame or insult attributed to a broken hip. Stigma associated with bipolar depression and other mental illnesses made it necessary for Winston Churchill to hide it from the public.
So yes, Winston Churchill had a 'black-dog'. Knight & Knight (1996) explains it this way, "It is common in everyday life for people to express the impact of one experience in terms of a mode representing a different experience. For example, a sudden cognitive shift may be described as 'It hit me like a ton of bricks!' Winston Churchill described his depression as 'a black dog.' Depression is often described in visual sensory terms (e.g., black, dark, fog)." (Knight & Knight, www.Questia.com).
Churchill's coping strategy: The literature repeats that Churchill assuaged encounters with low melancholy and profound unhappiness with hard work, "The best prophylactic for black dog that he knew was red boxes [cigars] and the fleet of private secretaries and sense of purpose and power which went with them" (Blake & Louis, 1996). But there were many, many times when he needed protection from the public eye and his family, friends, and colleagues did just that. Bouts of depression made Winston Churchill, who is the most respected man in British history, vulnerable and afraid. These matters where rationalized and hushed up (Rasor, 2000, pp 262-3). The reason is simple but nevertheless hard to accept.
Embarrassment, stigma, and shame are the greatest obstacles for recovering from bipolar depression says Senita Jassi who works for 'Rethink,' the organization that paid for the statue of Winston Churchill in a straightjacket. People with known mental illnesses are openly taunted and publicly embarrassed and Jassi provides examples (Goulden, 2004, Would you be scared to live next door to this man?). Winston Churchill was a prolific writer and wrote most when his 'black dog' was most determined. But in the tens of thousands of pages of literary and historical excellence, he admitted to no mental health problems. Though he may have been suicidal as is common among those afflicted with bipolar depression, Winston Churchill was too British to publicly entertain suicide. Admitting to depression would have been tantamount to political suicide during times when politics and his great performances were so important to the British surviving WWII.
The editor and chief of the literary quarterly, American Scholar, Joseph Epstein, wrote under the pseudonym 'Aristides'. His encounter with his own black dog captures, I believe, the spark that enabled Winston Churchill and all of us afflicted with bipolar disorder, to prevail:
"Work is for me the antidote, not for any of the world's ills, but for all of my own. Work keeps the black dog from the door, the blue funk on the other side of the window. When working well, my life falls into place; I needn't search for life's meaning but seem temporarily to have found it; I am, in a world not notably arranged for sustained felicity, as close to happiness as I am likely to get. That's what's in it for the talent--the sweet delight in exercising one's gifts--and that is everything" American Scholar, 1997.
These are enlightened words of an exceptional man. Voices such as this, though highly vocal, could not stop the straightjacketing of an artists honest depiction of bipolar depression. Stigma and shame relative to people with mental illnesses continue unabated. Ashes to Ashes and British Cricket isn't really cricket when it comes to mental illness. Click next and see why?
