17. Ernest Hemingway was one of the world’s greatest novelists, and took his own life after decades of mental trauma
One of America’s great novelists, Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) is remembered for works such as For Whom the Bell Tolls and the Pulitzer-Prize winning The Old Man and the Sea. In 1954, his literary achievements were recognized with a Nobel Prize. Long before these successes, Hemingway volunteered to drive an ambulance for the American Red Cross in World War I. In 1918, he was injured on the Austro-Italian frontline and decorated for his heroism. The things he saw, and a nurse rejecting his marriage proposal, stuck with him, and war formed an important part of many of his novels.
A true perfectionist, the high standards that Hemingway set himself meant he suffered from anxiety, which turned into decades of alcoholism. His notoriously foul temper has led some to conclude that he was bipolar, but Andrew Farah, a forensic psychologist, believes that he was actually suffering from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) from repeated blows to the head, which began with his injuries in World War I. The condition also accounts for Hemingway’s paranoia and psychotic episodes. Subjected to ineffective electroshock therapy, Hemingway sadly took his own life with a shotgun in 1961, like his father before him.
