Learning from Lincoln about depression
‘The Great Emancipator, Abraham Lincoln, struggled all of his life to free himself from a depression that often crushed his spirit. As a young man in New Salem, Ill., he would tell friends and acquaintances that he thought of killing himself. He would rise early in the morning and sit reading gloomy poems and tell acquaintances that he was ” the loneliest man in the world.”
The History Channel earlier this month broadcast a documentary about Lincoln’s remarkable climb from backwoods farming to local politics and the presidency while wrestling with melancholia. Without the benefit of antidepressant medications or modern psychological therapy, he learned to persevere through his hypochondriasis, or “the hypo,” as he called it.
Modern historians in the program claim that his political success was partly due to his determination to overcome the sadness that dogged him. His depressive states acted as his crucible, preparing him for the presidency of a country where hundreds of thousands of Americans died in war, only one of his four sons lived to adulthood and his wife, too, suffered from depression.’
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