Yes, I had read the issue an year ago somewhere else, in a critical
biography,
(at the moment I cannot recall which at this very moment and I am leaving in
a few hours)
and therefore enquired the scientific reliability of these assertions.
Yes, apparently, Plath needed urgent hospitalization. She was under the
direct control
of her doctor who was administering strong sedative drugs to cure her
depression.
The most incredible thing (and scandalous too, if one thinks that she did
not get
any real mental-care support by the Health Care in terms of social-workers
and so on) was
indeed the fact that the children were left in her care, since when someone
is
in that phase of depression can attempt suicide and she more than once had
shown to be going towards that solution. The couple of friends who had
Sylvia in their care
in that last week-end could not her stop disappearing for a few hours by
car.
This was already crazy since she was taking heavy drugs.
Had she been taken to the psychiatric ward her doctor was hoping to refer
her to
she would have maybe survived a couple of more months.
It is my belief that these kind of patients know and find a way to avoid
surveillance and drugs cannot always be prescribed and administered if the
patients refused to collaborate.
As in her case. The reports about the last minutes of her life does show
under a strictly
medical and psychiatric point of view the insurgence of manic phase where
she was
scrupulously (and delusionally) planning her death.
Susanne
----- Original Message -----
From: gb savage <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, July 09, 2000 1:07 AM
Subject: RE: Plath, suicide + health
> Here's a well-researched article that argues/demonstrates that Plath's
> suicide was closely connected with chronic health problems that were
> untreatable at the time. If this is the case, it throws out most of the
> other theories, or at least it shifts the context markedly.
>
>
> http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2000/06/01/plath2/index.html
>
>
> Excuse me if this has already been posted to the list, I've been away the
> last week.
>
>
> Regards,
> Gillian Savage
>
>
>
>
>
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