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After: Suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bordain

cduggles

cduggles

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If you have seen women with purses, you have seen a Kate Spade bag.

Her suicide is a reminder that the severity or even the presence of depression and anxiety aren't always obvious and we should talk more about mental health.

The Kate Spade brand is donating $1 million to mental health organizations

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  • The Kate Spade brand announced on Wednesday that it would donate $1 million to mental-health awareness to honor its late founder.




  • Her husband, Andy, said she had suffered from depression and anxiety for many years.
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  • The first donation of $250,000 will be given to Crisis Text Line, a non-profit that supports people in crisis using a text-messaging service.

To honor its late founder, the Kate Spade brand is donating $1 million towards mental-health awareness, it announced Wednesday.

Kate Spade was found dead by suicide in her apartment in New York City on June 5. She was 55.

In an email to customers, the company announced that it would donate $250,000 to the Crisis Text Line, a non-profit that supports people in crisis using a text-messaging service. It is also encouraging the public to donate by matching any of their donations up to $100,000 between June 20 and June 29. So far, around $16,000 has been donatedby the public.

The company did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment or confirm how the remaining amount of money will be donated.

According to her husband, Andy Spade, renowned handbag-and-accessories designer Kate Spade had suffered from depression for many years.

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"She was actively seeking help and working closely with her doctors to treat her disease, one that takes far too many lives," her husband, Andy Spade said in a statement to The New York Times after her death.

"We were in touch with her the night before and she sounded happy. There was no indication and no warning that she would do this. It was a complete shock."

While Kate Spade had not been a part of her namesake brand for more than a decade ? she and her husband sold their last remaining stake to Neiman Marcus in 2006 ? many still associated her with the brand and have been wondering what it will do to honor her legacy.

The company paid respect to its late founder immediately after her death by posting a tribute on its social-media channels, saying, "Kate Spade, the visionary founder of our brand, has passed. Our thoughts are with her family at this incredibly heartbreaking time. We honor all the beauty she brought into the world."

The message was also posted in its store windows.

Fans have taken to social media to show their gratitude to the brand for its donation to mental health causes.

"This is why @katespadeny is the most amazing company," one fan wrote on Twitter.
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Anthony Bourdain Toxicology Report: No Narcotics in His System

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Anthony Bourdain did not have narcotics in his body when he died this month, a French judicial official said.
Mr. Bourdain, a New York chef, author and television correspondent whose death shook fans across the world, was found dead on June 8 in a hotel bathroom in Kaysersberg, a small village in the Alsace region of France.

Police at the time ruled his death a suicide by hanging. From an investigative standpoint, the only question left was whether he had any substances in his body.


There were none, save for the trace of a nonnarcotic medicine in a therapeutic dose, Christian de Rocquigny, the local prosecutor in charge of the investigation, said in a text message to The New York Times.

Mr. Bourdain, 61, had been in the village filming his CNN show “Parts Unknown” with Eric Ripert, the chef of Le Bernardin in New York.

Mr. Bourdain had skipped dinner the evening before his body was discovered. When he did not arrive for breakfast with Mr. Ripert the next morning, a receptionist went into his room and found his body.

Mr. Bourdain was cremated in France and his remains and travel belongings were sent to his younger brother and only sibling, Christopher. The family will likely have a small, private ceremony of some kind, said Gladys Bourdain, his mother.

“He would want as little fuss as possible,” she said.

Ms. Bourdain, a former editor at The New York Times, said she planned to get “Tony” tattooed in small letters on the inside of her wrist next week as a personal memorial to her son.
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Kate Spade Worried What People Would Say if They Found Out Her Secret: Depression

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Tragically, the world lost another creative mind to the ravages of clinical depression this week when Kate Spade lost her life to suicide. In an interview with the Kansas City Star, Kate Spade?s sister helped shed some light about why the life of a successful business person who seemed to have everything going on for her would end so unexpectedly.

It?s a brutal reminder that depression doesn?t discriminate. It doesn?t recognize class, gender, income levels ? and least of all, success.

Kate Spade is best known for her eponymous line of handbags and accessories she developed in the 1990s with her two business partners. While she left the company more than 10 years ago, she was always inextricably linked to the company that bears her name. More recently she had begun a new company for women?s accessories.

In the interview with the Kansas City Star newspaper via email, Kate?s sister Reta Saffo helped shed light on what might have been going on with Ms. Spade, who was born Katherine Brosnahan.

Over the course of the past four years, both Saffo and Spade?s husband and business partner Andy tried to get Spade into treatment for her depression:

?I?d flown out to Napa and NYC several times in the past 3-4 years to help her to get the treatment she needed (inpatient hospitalization)? She was all set to go ? but then chickened out by morning. I even said I (would) go with her and be a ?patient? too (she liked that idea)? That seemed to make her more comfortable, and we?d get so close to packing her bags, but?

In the end, the image of her brand ? happy-go-lucky Kate Spade ? was more important for her to keep up. She was definitely worried about what people would say if they found out.?

When the comedian Robin Williams also ended his life by suicide in 2014, the act seemed to become a touchstone for Spade. Saffo said they would be watching news reports about his death. ?We were freaked out/saddened but she kept watching it and watching it over and over. I think the plan was already in motion even as far back as then.?

?After numerous attempts, I finally let go,? Saffo wrote to the newspaper.

Trying to Make Sense of Suicide

It can be hard, if not impossible, to make sense of another person?s decision in a matter like this. Clinical depression has a way of clouding a person?s judgment and making the future look entirely hopeless and without meaning. No matter how successful you may be, depression doesn?t care. It tells lies to the person suffering from it ? lies the person too often ends up believing are the truth.

I was very sorry to read of Kate Spade?s untimely passing, and hope her story serves as a reminder that sometimes, despite the support and love of people who care and their repeated attempts to get someone help, a person may still make the decision to forgo the pain they are experiencing with an act that cannot be undone. Sometimes everything a person may do to try and help may still not be enough. It?s not anyone?s fault ? only the depression is to blame.

Shame and stigma still very much exist today when it comes to getting help for a treatable condition like depression. I?m sorry to see that for many people, they still do not see viable options as an alternative to suicide.

I?m here to tell you that you are stronger than you think. You can reach out for help ? nobody will judge you. Nobody will treat you unkindly for seeking treatment for this condition. Help is available and for most people, they feel better after reaching out and getting into treatment. I encourage you to become one of those people.

May you rest in peace, Kate.
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Need help now?

Please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.
 
Central Florida local 407 425 2624
Miami 305 358 HELP
Jacksonville 904 632 0600
Tampa 813 234 1234

Also 211 in most populated cities.
 
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Commentary: Can we talk about alcoholism and Anthony Bourdain?

I didn't know Anthony Bourdain, but felt like I did in one small important way. In him, I saw a drinking alcoholic with a front-stage vigorous attempt to do it successfully. His was a fantastic life-embracing show, with drinking taking a prominent role in the joie de vivre, and sometimes that made it hard for me to watch.

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When he threw back shots, indeed got wasted, I saw a fellow alcoholic living dangerously whereas most viewers, I imagine, saw ?a man who knew how to drink, knew how to live.? His state of mind will be called depression, and who can argue with that in the wake of his suicide. But can we please, people, start connecting the dots to alcoholism (also a disease of the mind), at least when it is screamingly evident?


Perhaps I should not presume to think I know, but I can at least invite the conversation where it is uncomfortably and amazingly absent. Did alcoholism (which brings depression or ineffectively ?treats? depression) ultimately take down Bourdain?


Alcohol is a drug. ?Drugs? and ?alcohol? remain separate in conversations about addiction, like a ?bad sister? doing outrageous unthinkable things while the ?good sister? quietly nurses a prom hangover and shame from a blackout.


Can Bourdain's death please generate a conversation about alcoholism and not just befuddlement about his fantastic life that countless people wish they had? Because you don't want his life. The travel, the breadth of his experiences, sure, maybe. But this man on the move had to stop sometimes. No cameras, no action. Just himself. I didn?t know him, but I do know addiction and it can be a fiercely critical companion that may take a back seat but lies in wait. It can tear us down and sometimes just won't shut up ? goading shame, provoking self-loathing and inviting emotional isolation.


When you're an addict, as he proclaimed he was, it's highly risky to keep one drug on board. He had respect and fear of the ?hard drugs.? He reportedly was grateful and humble for having escaped death by addiction decades ago.


We'll be talking about depression and suicide for days now, with Kate Spade's and Bourdain's suicides, until another famous person with a seemingly magnificent life shocks us. Bourdain was a famous, beloved ?bad boy? as one friend described him. He demonstrated a generosity of self. He cared deeply, it would seem, about injustice, and about the opiate-addicted with whom he empathized. I've found, working with the addicted, both those using and those in recovery, that addicts/alcoholics are generally extremely sensitive souls.


Alcohol ?works? for the alcoholic until it doesn't. It promises and delivers what we seek from it for years, until it stops working. Yet still we want to drink like everybody else. Drinking is fun, right? It goes with culinary delights, correct? It enhances life, isn't that so? Well, yes, and no. Certainly ultimately ?no? if you have the malady, which quietly marches on and in time takes our joy, even our will to live and carry on and pretend we're OK. We're not OK. We are just good actors. Bourdain perhaps was one of the best. With alcoholism, we make rules as we go along, to prove we have control. We also break those rules. We take life by the tail, but, dare I say, some weary of the show and let go.


This is a progressive, chronic, fatal disease with predictable stages. The brain science is in, and has been for years, yet it is ignored or given short shrift because drinking is such a huge part of our cultural fabric. We don't stop and think about it until we're forced to; until it's obvious, undeniable, that someone we care about is suffering.


Alcoholics minimize, deny, believe their drinking is under control, and refuse to connect the dots ? that drinking for escape, relief or to solve problems is creating more problems, and is taking a toll on self-worth and perhaps cognition. The substance they are drinking for ?a lift? is a depressant. The guilt, shame, powerlessness and depression can take them down.


Blessedly it can also wake us up to the true nature of our disease. We stop separating ?drugs? from ?alcohol.? We find freedom from the tyranny that is addiction, that is alcoholism. Can we at least talk about it?
 
cduggles said:
Alcohol ?works? for the alcoholic until it doesn't.
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God this is where I am at. I don't even want to drink. I hate alcohol. But the detoxes are beyond crushing. There's no minimizing my own alcoholism anymore.
 
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Captain.Heroin said:
I wonder if the doctors let her have access to meds.

I think a lot less about suicide when I have meds.
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For some people, medication can tip them over the edge. I think that things like benzo's, for coincident anxiety and depression, are really bad; that loss of inhibitions can feed into depression and make people do things they would normally restrict themselves from. Personally, I really dislike benzo's, they make anxiety worse in the medium-term and cause a sort of malaise that bolsters depression, so despite being effective for anxiety in the short term (and incredibly effective), I do not really ever take them for 'fun' or anxiolysis. I've found pregabalin, when used responsibily, to have a positive impact after a few weeks, and without most of the benzo fog stuff that I came to hate.

Really, I think CBT is incredibly useful at reframing suicidal thinking, much more so than any medication but of course, it probably takes a combination of meds and therapy to achieve the best results.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
I wonder if the doctors let her have access to meds.

I think a lot less about suicide when I have meds.
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A gossip site called TMZ stated that anxiety medications were found nearby.
I didn't want want to post a rumor from an untrustworthy source, and that's all I saw in my search indicating medication.

Edit: Related to article #4, is it possible that Kate Spade simply didn't want to go to inpatient treatment? She might have made plausible excuses to avoid going?
 
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When Margot Kidder died in May, she was remembered as the actress who brought the fictional reporter Lois Lane to life in a series of blockbuster Superman movies in the 1970s and ’80s.

Her obituary in The New York Times did not specify a cause of death. But on Wednesday the Park County coroner’s office in Montana, where she lived, revealed that the cause was suicide. A statement provided by the coroner to The Associated Press said that Ms. Kidder “died as a result of a self-inflicted drug and alcohol overdose.”

Ms. Kidder’s daughter, Maggie McGuane, said she knew that her mother had taken her own life. “It’s a big relief that the truth is out there,” she told The A.P. “It’s important to be open and honest so there’s not a cloud of shame in dealing with this.”

In the month after Ms. Kidder died at age 69 on May 13 in Livingston, Mont., the designer Kate Spade and the chef Anthony Bourdain both took their own lives, prompting widespread conversations about how to prevent what has become a national public health crisis.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/...e-death.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
 
I think its reasonable to suspect that Anthony Bourdain might've died due to auto-erotic asphyxiation. There doesn't seem to be a catalyst that would prompt a risky and impulsive suicide. If its true that he used his bathrobe this would mean it was an extremely impulsive and risky suicide. (high likelihood the bathrobe would not hold his weight) This is the type of suicide you would expect to be precipitated by an event or perhaps a drug-induced psychosis. If this was something he had been ruminating over he probably would've been better prepared.

He also seems like a guy that would leave a note or hint to the likelihood of suicide - a la Hunter S. Thompson or Kurt Cobain.

One of his last tweets:

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what do you guys think?
 
Interesting... that kinda makes sense. It doesn't seem to quite add up to me that he killed himself while people close to him didn't see it coming at all. Of course, Robin Williams took me utterly by surprise as well. You never know what's going on inside someone's head...
 
You don't get it?

Bourdain's wife fucked a 17 year old and he learned about it, and was already life-long depressed, had already used all the drugs and probably had no interest in relapsing. He "didn't mind" quitting cigarettes (lie) and obviously was not mentally right.

Should have gone to a psychiatrist.

If you listen to the way he wrote and talked in his shows I was not surprised at all when I heard he killed himself.

sigmond said:
I think its reasonable to suspect that Anthony Bourdain might've died due to auto-erotic asphyxiation. There doesn't seem to be a catalyst that would prompt a risky and impulsive suicide. If its true that he used his bathrobe this would mean it was an extremely impulsive and risky suicide. (high likelihood the bathrobe would not hold his weight) This is the type of suicide you would expect to be precipitated by an event or perhaps a drug-induced psychosis. If this was something he had been ruminating over he probably would've been better prepared.

He also seems like a guy that would leave a note or hint to the likelihood of suicide - a la Hunter S. Thompson or Kurt Cobain.

One of his last tweets:

3mcG9Ow.png


what do you guys think?
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Uh, no. Suicide.

I'm sure his wife would have known if he was into kink shit like that. They seemed like two scoops of plain vanilla to me.
 
Captain.Heroin said:
Uh, no. Suicide.

I'm sure his wife would have known if he was into kink shit like that. They seemed like two scoops of plain vanilla to me.
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Yeah she might have known but is too embarrassed to let the cat out of the bag. I mean it would've been less embarrassing if he had died choking on a Big Mac. i still think murder is possible too; who knows, maybe Bourdain was C.I.A
 
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