These people are, as we are told, sick. But it’s not the mental health of Hollywood, but rather the complete lack of moral health, that is at the root of the problem.
As a seeming epidemic of suicides pummel the entertainment world, leaders and companies are responding with innovative answers to help erase the stigma around mental illness and provide help: “I’ve seen the pain and devastation it causes.”
In January 2017, 51-year-old U.K.-based locations manager Michael Harm —whose credits included the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise — took his own life in a London hotel room. Shortly before, Harm sent a note to a friend in the industry describing his work as “one of the loneliest jobs on a film,” one that came with “no HR,” and urged more care on film sets.
In the three years since, a tragic procession of suicides have shaken the film, television and music industries, including those of host and chef Anthony Bourdain, manager Jill Messick, comic Brody Stevens, Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, The Prodigy frontman Keith Flint and DJ Avicii. This year opened with news that Ugly Betty creator Silvio Horta, 45, had taken his own life.
It will not surprise me to learn that less than half of these “suicides” actually involved the individual taking his own life. We’re already well past the point of statistical improbability.