Psychiatr News July 7, 2006
Volume 41, Number 13, page 15
© 2006 American Psychiatric Association
Member of Famously Troubled Clan Ensures Own Mental Health
Eve Bender
Mariel Hemingway's quest for wellness arose partly out of a childhood spent
trying to survive a family fraught with dysfunction and "a lot of
pain."
Years after growing up in a family in which dysfunction and mental illness
were "swept under the carpet," actress and author Mariel Hemingway
told APA annual meeting attendees that it is crucial to make suicide part of a
national dialogue.
The topic of suicide is something with which Hemingway is all too familiar.
Her grandfather, author and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway, committed suicide
in July 1961 at age 61, four months before her birth. Ernest's grandfather,
father, and great uncle also took their own lives.
Hemingway said she believes that her grandfather's alcoholism and suicidal
tendencies were related to a fear of not being able to sustain the level of
creativity and literary genius for which he had gained fame.
In 1996 suicide struck even closer to home for Hemingway when her
41-year-old sister, actress and model Margaux, died from an overdose of a
sedative. At first the family was told that her death was accidental, but
after a two-week investigation, officials ruled it a suicide.
"For years, I could not wrap my head around this," Hemingway
told APA past president Richard Harding, M.D. "I did not want to accept
that this was the case."
Hemingway sat down with Harding to discuss her upbringing and career as an
actress and author for the fifth annual Conversations event of the American
Psychiatric Foundation in May at APA's 2006 annual meeting in Toronto. Each
year Astrazeneca provides an educational grant to support the event.
It was only a few years later while attending a suicide-prevention function
that Hemingway was able to admit—to herself and others—that her
sister had committed suicide. "I realized there was no shame in
it—it didn't make me bad, and it didn't make my family bad.... I think
it's very important to talk about suicide, and know that it's not your fault
if you are a survivor."
Hemingway grew up in a small town in Idaho as the youngest of three sisters
in a somewhat chaotic environment. "My parents were alcoholics,"
she said. "There was a lot of pain, a lot of yelling and
screaming."
In addition, one of her older sisters, Muffet, experienced frequent bouts
with psychosis and was in and out of psychiatric institutions when Hemingway
was growing up.
Due to her father's strained relationship with his father, there was little
mention of the famed writer in the household.
Hemingway noticed that something was different about her family when she
realized that her elementary school carried the family name and the teachers
and children treated her differently.
"When I handed in a kid's paper that was just kind of average, they
looked at me as if to say, `Oh, that's too bad,'" Hemingway said with a
laugh.
Her sister Margaux left Idaho for New york City as a teenager for a screen
test and "literally became an overnight success," Hemingway
said.
Margaux helped her younger sister embark on a film career as well. In 1976
She debuted in the film "Lipstick," alongside her sister, and
three years later Mariel was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as
Woody Allen's teenage lover in the movie "Manhattan."
Hemingway said she moved to New york City during the filming of the movie
"to free myself of this somewhat difficult family I was in."
In the meantime, her sister's life was beginning to become increasingly
complicated. Symptoms of mental illness became more pronounced as time went
on, and she experienced psychotic symptoms in the months before she took her
life, Hemingway noted.
Hemingway's life took a different direction. "Everything I did was to
create better health for myself," she acknowledged. "I come from
addiction and was clearly addicted to health and
wellness."
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Mariel Hemingway: "The ability to calm my body and mind [through
yoga and meditation] has been very powerful for me.".
David Hathcox
|
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Though her obsession with health bordered on the unhealthy—she
admitted to having an eating disorder at one point in her life—she has
now found the balance she's long searched for, Hemingway said.
About 20 years ago, she began practicing yoga and meditation. In what is a
cross between a memoir and a guide to yoga and meditation, Finding My
Balance, Hemingway described the benefits she has derived from the
practice of yoga. She has written another book about tools for wellness, which
will be published next year.
"I am a big believer in the fact that if my grandfather were to do it
all over again, he would be healthy," she said. 
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