News came this week (though it happened last week) of the suicide of Nicholas Hughes,
son of famed poets Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. According to Frieda
Hughes, the couple's surviving daughter, her brother, who was 47 and a
professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, had been battling
depresion for some time. But although his suicide may not have come as
a shock to those who knew him and his personal sadness, it reverberated
with a sickening familiarity when heard by those familiar with his
parents' lives -- and it raises questions pyschologists and researchers
are still trying to answer, including the big one: is suicide a
hereditary act?
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