So sad and so difficult to understand why someone would do this. I like Kate Spade designs.
My H’s former business partner committed suicide last month–he hang himself and his daughter found him. It was a week before was to graduate from high school.
People have described the most severe forms of depression as being as painful as any other physical affliction. So please, before you judge someone as selfish, consider that the deceased was likely in agony and needed it to end.
RIP. I love her hand bag designs, classic style.
I hadn’t heard until I saw this thread. Very sad indeed!
All we know is, in that moment, that is what she decided to do.
She’s also the aunt of Rachel Brosnahan (House of Cards, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel).
This may be something she thought about and planned for awhile, who knows.I am not a fashion person but the major CFDA awards were last night in Brooklyn. Had she done this yesterday, that would have been all they probably talked about in interviews. So very sad.
Well none of us will ever know what the exact situation or state of mind existed for someone who is seemingly an accomplished and talented woman with a 13 year daughter would do this…very sad, my heart aches for her daughter
Can’t even imagine a 13 year old girl going off to school and having her mother die that morning, in this manner. Heartbreaking.
It is heartbreaking and as mean as it sounds,but certainly not knowing the back story,on surface a tad selfish on Kate Spade’s part.
I know someone whose father and sibling killed themselves. He harbors a lot of anger, especially at his sibling, for not trying hard enough to live. (His description, not mine.)
Her sister was quoted as saying that she had suffered from depression for years and family had been trying to get her into treatment. Assuming that is true, the note to her daughter makes more sense. “Ask Daddy” as in he will tell you what I was going through.
It is heartbreaking and as mean as it sounds,but certainly not knowing the back story,on surface a tad selfish on Kate Spade's part.<<
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@momofthreeboys I’m going to say it doesn’t sound mean, it sounds uninformed. Suicide is the culmination of indescribable pain. I can’t imagine thinking it was selfish.
If someone has cancer and fights mightily but loses to the disease, would you say they are selfish?
I don’t know the particulars of Kate Spades situation but it’s possible she fought mightily against depression and mental illness and lost to the disease.
Long ago, my husband’s mother committed suicide at the age of 49 after many years of recurrent, severe episodes of depression. She had been treated with both medicines and psychotherapy, but sometimes her illness got out of control despite treatment. There had been three previous suicide attempts.
It’s easy for me – as a person who was not much affected by her death because I didn’t know her very well – to say that she died of a complication of what was obviously a brutal, hard-to-treat disease – much in the same way that people sometimes die from complications of diabetes.
But it wasn’t easy for people who were closer to her to think that way. Even though they were well informed about her illness, some admitted to feeling that she had been selfish. I think this is a common reaction to suicide and an understandable one, especially if the suicide causes a lot of pain to others.
The best way to combat the lack of compassion that goes with thinking the suicidal person is “selfish” is to remind yourself that by framing in that way, one is applying a standard of rational thought processes inherent in a normal, healthy mind to a person incapable of meeting that standard. These people are not in their right minds-they are not capable of seeing things the same way a person with a healthy mind sees things. In that deep of a depression, they cannot possibly appreciate the true impact of their decision.
Just because a person is not psychotic and totally detached from reality does not mean that they are in any way capable of understanding the full implications of their disease and their behavior. Many of them, rather than being selfish and thinking only of their own pain, truly believe that by taking their own life, they are sparing their loved ones even more pain.
It’s amazing to me how little empathy and compassion some people have; they honestly don’t get why others don’t see things “the right way,” exactly as they see things. In order to experience empathy, one has to do away with the thought that things are just so obvious and clear and realize that there are many different ways of perceiving things-especially if one is deeply mentally ill, as people with severe depression truly are.
On the Today show, they quoted her sister as saying that Kate suffered from mental illness for some time, was using alcohol to self-medicate, didn’t want to go to rehab because she was afraid of what it would do to her brand, was obsessed with coverage of Robin Williams’ suicide, and begged the sister to attend her funeral even though she knew the sister didn’t like them.
It seems that she had suicidal ideation for some time. How sad that she didn’t get the help she needed. My heart breaks for her daughter.
I have posted this before, but please read the interview with psychologist/suicide expert Dr. Thomas Joiner, whose father suicided when he was younger. It gives great understanding to the state of mind of the suicidal patient, who often think they are unworthy, and are doing their family a favor by relieving them of the burden of being with them. https://psychology.as.virginia.edu/2017-18-colloquium-series-thomas-joiner-florida-state-university. This is the transcript of the interview with NPR- good read/listen. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126365907
I just watched a report with Kate Spade’s sister. I find it amazing that this woman would go on and on about Kate Spade, with seemingly no concern or consideration of her young niece. The comments about Robin Williams were particularly offensive. The media’s inquiries are perfectly legitimate, as it’s their job to ask questions. However, people do have the right to say NO COMMENT or the family wants privacy. I think that for a child of 13, who is just coming to grips with puberty and the changing nature of the relationship between mother and daughter, to have her mother’s death made so public and to imply that she was planning it for several years, has to be confusing. You start to wonder how much of what happened in my life was real and how much was an act. My hope is that her father gets her into counseling immediately, even before the funeral.
I used to think, when I was young,that suicide was a selfish act done by someone with no regard for their loved ones. I long ago moved past that mindset. Most people who commit suicide are truly in a deep, dark sad place emotionally, a place I can’t even conceive of being in. It isn’t just a funk or the blues. It’s in your bones. I wish there was a better way to detect suicidal ideation. I remember watching a show once where people who survived their suicide attempts said, they didn’t want to really die, they just wanted to feel better. As someone more eloquent than I once said: "“Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” Kate Spade’s problems are over, her little girl’s are just beginning.
With all due respect, given the report by her sister that Kate struggled for years with mental health issues that she may have tried to address in part with alcohol, it’s quite possible (hopeful) that her daughter has already been/is in therapy.
I haven’t seen the sister’s interview, but I actually think she is doing her niece a service in clearing up the implications of the “ask daddy,” which to many people implies that it was his fault. This way, there will always be a counterpoint to speculation about that.
I don’t understand why the comment about her reaction to Robin Williams’ suicide is offensive.
The real villain here is the person who leaked her suicide note.
IMO, it’s okay to find it sad, to have empathy or sympathy for Spade but also to find it selfish. Knowing several families who have been devastated by suicide, who had to personally discover their father who but a bullet into his head or their sister who hung herself, who have to live with those reoccurring images for life, who have endured years of therapy for multiple generations of family members, who have had the very fabric of their families torn asunder as a result, yes I do find it selfish as do many of the family members directly affected. They remain sad but angry. They are sympathetic to the pain their loved one was going through but still angry. Suicide leaves lasting damage on others, who can spend years if not their lives wondering “why weren’t we good enough to hang on for, to fight for?” even with therapy. Sure, we need to understand how the person with depression felt but those left behind also deserve our sympathy and empathy as well. As much as I feel much sadness and sympathy for the person that took their own life, for the pain they lived in, I feel comfortable saying I can’t help but feel there is a selfishness as well especially when that person hasn’t sought help or says things like this “didn’t want to go to rehab because she was afraid of what it would do to her brand”. We are human. We are capable of wearing many emotions at the same time. We can feel for the one who took their life and for their loved ones left dealing with their death.