Van Gogh fought against delirium and alcohol

A pioneering study of mental health focusing on mental health by Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890) found in the years immediately preceding his suicide that the Dutch artist suffered from delirium, in part due to the withdrawal of alcohol from his body after cutting off his ear and taking him to the hospital.

An article published by researchers in the International Journal of Bipolar Disorders pointed to evidence that Van Gogh was increasingly dependent on wine and absinthe from 1886 until his death on July 29, 1890, at the age of 37, according to the newspaper. British The Guardian. .
The last three years of Van Gogh’s life were the most prolific in terms of productivity, as he created more than 30 portraits and a series of seven paintings of sunflowers.
When I was young, there were signs of bipolar disorder, along with borderline personality disorder traits, but this “is likely to be exacerbated by malnutrition-associated alcohol use disorder, which later led, along with increased psychosocial tensions, to a catastrophe. Cut off his ear, ”said the authors of the study, led by emeritus professor of psychiatry Willem Nollen of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
After lending his ear to a woman in a brothel, Van Gogh was admitted three times in a row to the hospital in Arles (France), between December 1888 and May 1889, and was later transferred to Saint-Rémy-de-Provence.
During two stays in the hospital, Van Gogh wrote that he suffered from “unbearable hallucinations”, anxiety and nightmares. He described it as “fever or mental or nervous insanity … I don’t know what to say or what to call it.”
Researchers suggest that the symptoms are related to a forced period without alcohol. They add that the withdrawal-related delirium was followed by “severe depressive episodes (at least one of them with psychotic features) from which he did not fully recover, eventually leading to suicide.”
The theory stems from an examination of 902 Van Gogh letters, 820 of which were written by his brother Theo and other relatives, as well as interviews with three historians who have studied the artist in depth.
The study participants also did not rule out that he had suffered from epilepsy in his final months, “which caused a very different expression of anxiety, delusions and hallucinations.”
The studio added: “Despite all these problems that contributed to his illness, we would also like to emphasize that Van Gogh was not only a great and extremely influential painter, but he was also an intelligent man with immense willpower, flexibility and perseverance”.