Chester Bennington lead singer of band Linkin Park committed suicide on the 20th July 2017. He had been suffering from depression and hanged himself.
He was 41 years old and is survived by his wife and his 6 children.
I remember when I was 15/16 and growing up in East London when the norm was to love Garage music / hip hop (which I loved) but then a new movement called Rap-Metal came into the fore and bands like Limp Bizkit and especially for me Linkin Park were at the forefront of this new movement.
I loved the music, the mixture of heavy rock beats with rap lyrics was infectious to me. The lyrics spoke greatly to me at that age and its sad to hear that someone I grew up listening to has succumbed to his depression and committed suicide. It was a well known fact that he had suffered abuse at the hands of an older man when he was a child. This led to years of drugs and alcohol abuse which would have greatly contributed to his depression not maybe reacting positively to any treatment he would have undertaken. If you listen to a lot of his early music, songs like Crawling, One Step Closer, Numb all make quite subtle /not subtle references to the battles he faced.
Depression is still one of those Mental Health conditions (link to https://jefferieslaw.co.uk/personal/mental-health) that people do not like to talk about for fear of being labelled or ostracised in society. According to statistics Mixed anxiety & depression (link to https://jefferieslaw.co.uk/personal/mental-health) is the most common mental disorder in Britain, with 7.8% of people meeting criteria for diagnosis. 4-10% of people in England will experience depression in their lifetime. (Source: https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/statistics/mental-health-statistics-most-common-mental-health-problems)
Those committing suicide often do as a result of suffering from a mental health problem such as the ones outlined above. Often drug and alcohol abuse coupled with the awful abuse he endured in childhood would have been major contributing factors to his death. It is so important that we continue to battle against the stigma attached to people who suffer from depression and encourage people that are suffering to try and seek help as soon as possible. By friends, family, colleagues being mindful of those around them and creating an environment whereby people who are suffering are able to share their thoughts and feelings around this, it can help to continue de-stigmatising those who are suffering and increase the amount of people being able to speak about it.
Chester Bennington unfortunately succumbed and it shows that it doesn’t matter how rich or poor a person is, depression is something that if not talked about and a person helped, can lead to a person losing their life.
As he famously sang: “Crawling in my skin, these wounds they will not heal, fear is how i fall, confusing what is real”. Don’t let fear prevent you from seeking help when you need it most and lets do more to try and de-stigmatise depression.
Rest in Peace Chester.