Mental illness is already tough to handle. When someone has Cancer, AIDS, Pneumonia or any other clearly identifiable disease, we know how to handle it. When someone has a mental disease, it is much harder. All our affection for people is wrapped up in the relationship we have with them, and that is essentially with their mind or emotional capacity. The relationship may be based on a sport or interaction you have with them - and that may end. Then you have the memory. You keep that. The challenge with mental issues is your perception of 'who they are changes'. Who they are and your most recent memory of them are very hard to separate. Deciding to separate them to maintain a memory is in a way acknowledging a death of sorts. Nicholas Fearn talks in his book 'Philosophy' on how someone can arguably be 'dead while alive' with certain mental illnesses (e.g. advance Alzheimer's).
I don't know much about Bobby Fischer beyond the documentary 'Bobby Fischer Against The World' which I just watched. What I found disturbing here was that his descent wasn't even necessarily an identifiable mental disease. In his case he was famous, so people knew about his slow alienation and although he ended up being 'adopted' by Iceland (with affection for his 1972 victory there), even that ended badly.
We spend a lot of time thinking about what we eat, what we do, and how much we exercise in our search for happiness. This documentary is a great example of the importance of mental health - for ourselves, those we care about and for our heroes.
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