Did Abraham Lincoln have a mental disorder even though he was one of our greatest Presidents?

Similar questions: Abraham Lincoln mental disorder greatest Presidents.

It's hard to tell, given that there was nobody to diagnose it during his lifetime Tt is largely believed he suffered from depression... Supposedly, he suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of a young lady he was fond of: Anne Rutlege. A supposed nervous breakdown he suffered is the stuff of legends in the motivational world. There was much cause for sadness in Lincoln’s life.

S only brother died in infancy. S mother and aunt and uncle succumbed to an epidemic when he was age nine. Ten years later his sister died giving birth to a still-born infant.

S father and mother were disposed to melancholy, and one side of the family "was thick with mental disease. " Despite this, Lincoln made it into adulthood showing few signs of depression. S first major episode coincided with the death of Anne Rutledge in 1835 when he was 26.

Lincoln had long since left the family farm to seek his fortune in the one-horse town of New Salem, Illinois. Many historians contend that there must have been a love interest between Rutledge and Lincoln, but Mr Shenk says there is no evidence. Depression is not as simple as cause and effect, Mr Shenk reminds us, citing a number of psychiatric sources, especially in someone predisposed to the illness.

Any number of apparently innocuous occurrences can set off an episode, including several converging at once. According to one account, Lincoln bore up to Anne’s death fairly well. Then came heavy rains that seemed to unnerve him.

He took to walking the woods alone with a gun and talking of suicide. Everyone in the village became aware of his strange behavior, and one concerned couple took him in for a week or two. ...By Lincoln’s late twenties, friends and colleagues regarded him as "melancholic."

The condition was virtually indistinguishable from the modern conception of depression, but did not carry the same stigma. Back in those days, despite an individual feeling "unmanned" by his affliction, there was considerable leeway for males to express their feelings in public, especially with the Romantic movement entering full flower. In Lincoln’s case, his sorrowful demeanor induced people to come to his aid.

Nowhere was this more apparent than when the young man turned up to practice law in Springfield, Illinois with all his worldly possessions in two saddlebags. A store proprietor, Joshua Speed, urged his forlorn customer to take the bags upstairs to his room and the two became fast friends. In an age when contact with the opposite sex was severely circumscribed, young men were encouraged "to pair off and form a special bond" as part of their grooming for greater responsibilities.

Lincoln and Speed even shared the same bed for four years, but this was fairly common practice not to be mistaken for homosexuality. Nevertheless, gender roles were defined quite differently. It was acceptable for young men to display their affection for one another.

This kind of intimacy encouraged the expression of one’s innermost thoughts and feelings, including depression. Mr Shenk points to a number of forces at work when Lincoln was coming of age. On one hand, it was an age of hope.

The new economy for the first time gave ambitious young white men like Lincoln the opportunity to realize the dreams of the Founding Fathers. Steam power and the telegraph effectively shrunk the world and created a whole new mobile labor force. Advances in medical science instilled the belief that God was not punishing an individual, which effectively destigmatized illness.

This spawned a whole new movement in self-improvement. At the same time, thanks to a new religious revival, a loving redemptive God replaced the harsh vengeful God of John Calvin. Rather than predestination to hellfire and brimstone, men and women had the power to make moral choices and find their way to God’s favor.

For the first time in history, the individual did not have to subsume his needs to the needs of the tribe or community. But with this new freedom came new fears and anxieties. Gone was the communal security blanket.

Ever present was the specter of failure, with full responsibility borne by the exposed individual. America, the land of opportunity, led the world in mental illness. It was in this heady atmosphere of hope and insecurity that young Lincoln, now a hotshot lawyer and rising star in the state legislature, was to become badly unhinged.

Lincoln’s Breakdown Many historians attribute Lincoln’s depressive episode of the winter of 1840-41 to his breaking off his engagement with Mary Todd. But much more was happening in Lincoln’s life, Mr Shenk points out. In the legislature, Lincoln had hitched his political wagon to ambitious public works projects designed to open up the hinterlands to economic development.

This included an elaborate network of rails, canals, and roads. Then came the economic depression of 1837. Revenues dried up and the debt exploded.

Lincoln used up all his political capital urging the legislature to stay the course, which proved a disaster. By the end of 1840, the state was teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, forcing the abandonment of Lincoln’s beloved projects. The rival Democrats rode into power on the aftermath of the debacle, and Lincoln was cast as one of the scapegoats.

He barely held onto his seat in the legislature, his political career virtually finished. At the same time, he was laboring under a heavy workload as a lawyer, with nine cases before the state supreme court. As for Mary Todd, the exact time of the break-up is unknown, obviating a simple cause and effect.

Another woman had turned him down, and he may have had an interest in yet another. On top of this, his dear friend Joshua Speed was making plans to move back to Kentucky. Then the weather turned bitterly URL1 January 1841, Lincoln was confined to his bed, and his condition was the talk of the town.

He put himself in the care of a physician, which likely made him much worse. Standard medical treatment involved purging the body by aggressively drawing blood, ingesting mercury and other poisons, inducing vomiting, starving the patient, and plunging him in cold water. A concerned Joshua Speed told Lincoln that if he did not rally he would die.

Lincoln replied he was not afraid to die. Yet, ironically, his perceived failures may have stoked his will to live. He confessed to his friend an "irrepressible desire" to accomplish something before he died that would "redound to the interest of his fellow man.

" Some 20 years later, Lincoln would remind his friend of that conversation. Story is made by humans, with all the human frailties that make us less than perfect Sources: http://www.mcmanweb.com/article-225.htm LORDOFDARKNESS's Recommendations Lincoln's Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled s Greatness Amazon List Price: $14.95 Used from: $5.99 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 48 reviews) .

He suffered depression..... Abraham Lincoln: The 16th president, one of the greatest Americans, suffered from severe, incapacitating and occasionally suicidal depressions, documented in six biographical volumes by Carl Sandburg, and in numerous articles, including, “Dark Veil of Depression” by Judy Folkenburg, National Institute of Mental Health, published in The Consumer. Sources: covenanthealth.com/coldfusionapplication... .

That would be really hard to prove since he has been dead for so long but probably so. Many historians and psychologists seem to agree that Lincoln suffered from clinical depression and he was known to have very dark periods. Somehow though he functioned despite his depression but his insistence on working such long hours may well have been a way for him to avoid a sleep troubled by odd dreams and otherwise just to keep his mind off of his depression.

If you read deeply about Lincoln you find a very solitary man who isolated himself to an unhealthy extent. Sources: my readings KingofRandomCrap's Recommendations Lincoln Amazon List Price: $20.00 Used from: $3.79 Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5 (based on 92 reviews) We Are Lincoln Men : Abraham Lincoln and s Friends Amazon List Price: $25.00 Used from: $0.82 Average Customer Rating: 4.0 out of 5 (based on 20 reviews) The second book is an excellent examination of Lincoln’s friendships or lack thereof.

Lincoln showed an awful lot of ambition for a depressive Lincoln may well have been depressed; he had plenty of reason to be. A lot of people died in his life. But that's "situational depression", not "clinical depression".

Clinical depression is a mental disorder. Situational depression is a normal response to things that suck. Clinical depression lasts a long time, and it interferes with your life.

There is evidence that Lincoln did stay in bed all day playing Nintendo on occasion, but he shows an awful lot of ambition: he read voraciously, was a tenacious lawyers, held massive debates with his opponents, and successfully ran the country during a war. This sounds more like situational depression than clinical depression to me. He may also have had a mild case of clinical depression that came and went as well; there is family history to suggest it.

I'm not trying to discourage ambition in somebody who has a mental disorder. Just the opposite: I encourage it. People can still be brilliant when their mental disorders are kept at bay.

But these happen when you overcome the disorder, not give in to it. If Lincoln had stayed in bed all day every day, there's no way he could have been one of our greatest Presidents.

Can you receive disability for a mental disorder.

I have a BS andwant to further my education in mental health and counseling field, not sure which program to continue in.

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