Do depressed or mentally ill people make better leaders during crises?

A history of depression among leaders, in particular, says the author, has been found to be extremely advantageous, especially in moments of crisis. PHOTO/FILE 

In Summary

• Ghaemi says that all the world’s most effective leaders, including Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, suffered from bouts of depression that enabled them to empathise with sufferers.
• In his book, A First-Rate Madness, Ghaemi argues that in times of crisis, nations are better off with realistic depressed leaders than idealistic happy-go-lucky ones.
• While many African political leaders started off their careers as a reaction to great suffering and injustices, in the end, their empathy for the less privileged sections of society waned or disappeared completely as they became more entrenched within the political elite of their countries and as they became more wealthy.

By Rasna Warah
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With all the crises that the country is currently experiencing, from rising insecurity to rising debt, it is easy to feel helpless and depressed. However, depression may just be the cure for this country, as a book by psychiatrist Nassir Ghaemi reveals.

 

A history of depression among leaders, in particular, says the author, has been found to be extremely advantageous, especially in moments of crisis.

Depression generates realism, resistance, creativity and empathy, qualities that are critical when a nation is faced with an impending catastrophe.

Ghaemi says that all the world’s most effective leaders, including Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, suffered from bouts of depression that enabled them to empathise with sufferers.

LACKING EMPATHY

As a result, they made decisions that succeeded in reducing the scale of other people’s suffering. They were also extreme realists – they saw reality more clearly than most people, and therefore, were able to assess danger and risk more accurately.

In his book, A First-Rate Madness, Ghaemi argues that in times of crisis, nations are better off with realistic depressed leaders than idealistic happy-go-lucky ones.

Leaders who are unable to manage a crisis tend to be optimistic and insensitive to the suffering of others. They often come from privileged backgrounds where they have not tasted adversity or hardship. They often see themselves as better than others and seek to preserve their privileged status.

Could it be that our leaders have not experienced the kind of suffering that can make them save a situation in a moment of crisis?

Could the lack of empathy that our crop of politicians have shown towards the hardships experienced by ordinary Kenyans be due to their sense of entitlement that blinds them to the reality of Kenya? Do their self-preservation instincts extend only to themselves, and not to the nation?

 “If normal, mentally healthy people . . . run for president they tend not to be great ones,” says Ghaemi. On the other hand, when the “abnormal” mentally ill leader is confronted with a crisis or calamity, he rises to the occasion, and quite often saves a nation.

“Thus arises the empathetic leader, a person sometimes so arresting that the rest of us become convinced he must be an other worldly saint, a uniquely great soul, an anomalous event. He may be all those – but perhaps the secret is more prosaic: the common yet profound imprint of depression.”

Such leaders can produce what the author calls “depressive activism”, which was perfected by Mahatma Gandhi and adopted by the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Both Gandhi and King had attempted suicide as teenagers, suffered from depressive episodes in midlife, and severe depression towards the end of their lives.

“They each pushed the politics of empathy to its limits, and found their followers – the mass of normal humankind – unable to keep up with them,” writes Ghaemi.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Both used non-violent resistance as a strategy to overcome injustices, such as colonialism and racism. Their strategies worked, even if this cost them their lives. King himself admitted that “human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted”. Is the solution then to find leaders who have endured suffering and depression?

Alas, in Africa, even deep deprivation, suffering and depression in childhood does not lead to greater empathetic leadership in adulthood.

While many African political leaders started off their careers as a reaction to great suffering and injustices, in the end, their empathy for the less privileged sections of society waned or disappeared completely as they became more entrenched within the political elite of their countries and as they became more wealthy.

Prof Paul Collier of Oxford University says that while African leaders are often the product of grievance factors such as colonisation or marginalisation, greed eventually overtakes their desire to bring about social or political change. Hence, the activist morphs into a predator that eats his own people for his own political and economic survival.

We don’t have to look very far to see these predators all around us.