original link of the article- https://chessentials.com/chess-and-mental-illness/
Chess and Mental Illness
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Apr 21, 2020
0
#4
Illingworth wrote:
This is a very important article that deserves to be better-known.
Thanks a lot GM Max Illingworth for highlighting this point
Apr 21, 2020
0
#5
There are more articles on how to use chess in psychotherapy, recreational therapy, etc.. It is an effective adjunct and at times the intervention for many disorders.
The article cited above seems to only sensationalize personal tragedies that have nothing to do with chess. I wonder how their families feel about such nonsense being published.
Apr 21, 2020
0
#6
Daniel2340 wrote:
There are more articles on how to use chess in psychotherapy, recreational therapy, etc.. It is an effective adjunct and at times the intervention for many disorders.
The article cited above seems to only sensationalize personal tragedies that have nothing to do with chess. I wonder how their families feel about such nonsense being published.
chess as therapy maybe for you but these are professional players who live because of chess i mean chess is life for them professional players and definitely their performance matters so its very easy they come under stress and by the way not only personal things are mentioned read the full article and respect all the legends
Apr 21, 2020
0
#7
stylish_bunny wrote:
Daniel2340 wrote:
There are more articles on how to use chess in psychotherapy, recreational therapy, etc.. It is an effective adjunct and at times the intervention for many disorders.
The article cited above seems to only sensationalize personal tragedies that have nothing to do with chess. I wonder how their families feel about such nonsense being published.
chess as therapy maybe for you but these are professional players who live because of chess i mean chess is life for them professional players and definitely their performance matters so its very easy they come under stress and by the way not only personal things are mentioned read the full article and respect all the legends
Professional chess players have the exact same problems as every other profession. In my opinion, those type of articles for any profession have the main purpose of being click bait and serve no purpose except sensationalism.
Psychologists, physicians, other therapists use chess as part of an intervention----that is chess therapy.
Apr 21, 2020
0
#8
Daniel2340 wrote:
stylish_bunny wrote:
Daniel2340 wrote:
There are more articles on how to use chess in psychotherapy, recreational therapy, etc.. It is an effective adjunct and at times the intervention for many disorders.
The article cited above seems to only sensationalize personal tragedies that have nothing to do with chess. I wonder how their families feel about such nonsense being published.
chess as therapy maybe for you but these are professional players who live because of chess i mean chess is life for them professional players and definitely their performance matters so its very easy they come under stress and by the way not only personal things are mentioned read the full article and respect all the legends
Professional chess players have the exact same problems as every other profession. In my opinion, those type of articles for any profession have the main purpose of being click bait and serve no purpose except sensationalism.
Psychologists, physicians, other therapists use chess as part of an intervention----that is chess therapy.
This article is bunk.
You could pick any sport or industry, cherry pick a dozen or 2 dozen people, and write the same thing.
Watch, I'll do it for singers:
Keep your eyes open. Singers are naturally suicidal. I won't even mention Kurt Cobain or Michael Hutchence, whose deaths are still in doubt in some quarters, but Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Keith Flint, Wendy O. Williams, Keith Emerson, Brad Delp, and many others prove the point. In fact, it is safe to assume that singers that died of drug overdoses were also committing suicide...Elvis Presley, Prince, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison...just to name some headliners.
If you see a singer that is not smiling, please approach them and attempt to administer CPR...and if the singer's name is Keith, call 911 immediately, they are doubly at risk of dying.
Aristotle started this, and people like to flock to it, but it doesn't hold up any better than the chess and IQ being directly related.
This is just irresponsible:
Yes, our game is full of peculiar and eccentric people. But as much as they are socially inept, many of them are alone in their misery and crave for human contact.
So go to the hall and talk to people.
Approach that “weird guy” nobody wants to approach.
Analyze with an elderly master and listen to his the stories from his past – as much as you find them boring.
Don’t make fun of lower rated players – especially in youth categories.
Don’t create additional pressure or reprimand anyone for their losses.
Show people you care about them. Especially those who need someone to care about them the most.
Because you never know.
You might save someone’s life.
If you decide on the spot at some tournament that someone is "peculiar" and approach them with that assumption and start trying to "help save their lives"...well, you deserve what you are going to get.
eh bobby never was insane, he just never had friends and was isolated, abused far too long
so a bit of a mental illness but not in the aspect that he went insane but from isolation
Aug 5, 2022
0
#14
The last time there was a thread on mental health, the mods locked it.
ChessPawn921 wrote:
The last time there was a thread on mental health, the mods locked it.
except this is a chess discussion about the players health not someone trolling and faking illness
Aug 5, 2022
0
#16
After Bedlam beat the London chess club in a correspondence game, it was determined that you don't have to be crazy to play chess, but it helps.
Aug 5, 2022
0
#17
DrSpudnik wrote:
After Bedlam beat the London chess club in a correspondence game, it was determined that you don't have to be crazy to play chess, but it helps.
Begs the question
Aug 6, 2022
0
#18
Proof right there, chess will make you mentally ill. And an ugly second rate actor.
I think chess draws people with mental and emotional problems. Like me.
Sep 18, 2022
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#20
It should be mentioned that psychiatry is a specialty for a medical doctor; psychologists who routinely diagnose mental illness often have next to no medical knowledge. Before exploring a life-changing psychological diagnosis, medical etiology should first be ruled out. Many medical problems, drugs, diseases, even parasites can present with ostensibly psychological symptomology.
An example here is the world champion Wilhelm Steinitz, who historians often cite as probably suffering from syphilis. This was a bacterial infection for which at that time there was no cure, a horrible disease which physically ate away at the body and central nervous system, causing "madness". Steinitz might be property understood to have had a terminal illness rather than a mental illness. Being bacterial in origin, chess would not have caused or contributed to it in any way.
“Chess doesn’t drive people mad – in fact, it keeps mad people sane”
Bill Hartston
So, even if chess can’t cause mental illness in itself, I think it makes more likely to appear.
In our day top chess demands even more all-devouring preparation, complete concentration, and aloofness from everything else. In the future this tendency will only be intensified. Players will reach the summit and pass their peak well before thirty. Too much nervous energy will have been spent on preparation and struggle in the younger years. Giving the joy of creativity, and sometimes prizes and money, chess at the very highest level demands a trifle in return – the soul.
In the remainder of this post, you will find a list of chess players who suffered from severe mental illness.
I have to mention I refrained from including Robert James Fischer (because he was never officially diagnosed) or Paul Morphy (whose family tried to put him into a mental institution but he refused to go). I also refrained from including Raymond Weinstein (a young and promising American International Master who murdered an 83-year-old man) or Alexander Pichushkin (a serial killed known under the nickname „Chess Killer“), since I wanted to focus more on the depression/anxiety and less on psychopathic/sociopathic side of mental illnesses. More about Weinstein and Pichushkin can be read in the links provided under References.
With that being said, without further ado, I present you a list of 12 chess players who suffered from severe mental illness.
1) Alvis Vitolins
I will be honest. I first got the idea to write this post when I first read the afore-mentioned Sosonko book Russian Silhouettes, before I saw Anna Rudolf’s social media post.
More precisely, the chapter about Latvian Master and Tal’s trainer/sparring partner Alvis Vitolins left an indelible impression on me. Vitolins was an extremely promising player in his youth, but he never realized his full potential. Sosonko thinks it had a lot to do with a serious mental illness Vitolins has been fighting against throughout his entire life:
Even though he was treated by a psychiatrist friend for free and prescribed anti-depressants, Vitolins’ story had the most tragic outcome. At the age of 50, he decided to take his life by jumping from a bridge to Gauja river. In Sosonko’s words:
2) Karen Grigoryan
Karen Grigoryan was an Armenian International Master with an equally tragic story. He battled depression throughout his life and in 1989 – at the age of 42 – he committed suicide by jumping from the highest bridge in Yerevan. From Russian Silhouettes:
Incidentally, Grigoryan and Vitolins were close friends and could be often seen together in tournament halls, isolated from the world around them:
As they say, birds of a feather flock together…
3) Norman Von Lennep
Norman Von Lenne was a Dutch player from the end of the 19th century. Even though he came from an upper-class family and was expected to study, earn a title, get a good job and marry a nice young lady, he decided to become a chess professional instead. There are also rumors nice young ladies didn’t quite interest him as much as nice young men.
Due to his choices, his father decided to exile him. During the Hastings 1895 tournament where he worked as a journalist, it was announced he has decided to stay in England.
However, being abandoned by family and living in a foreign country among strangers apparently took its toll on his (fragile) mental state. In 1897, he took a ship sailing from Harwich to the Hook of Holland. During the trip, he jumped into the North Sea and ended his life at the shockingly early age of 25.
4) Curt von Bardeleben
The name of Curt von Bardeleben is most often associated with a game from the Hastings tournament 1895 in which his opponent Steinitz executed a brilliant combination involving a series of consecutive rook sacrifices. 4
What I didn’t know is that Vladimir Nabokov’s book The Defence 5 was inspired by von Bardeleben. At the age of 62, he committed suicide by jumping out of a window – just like Nabokov’s main character, Luzhin.
5) Wilhelm Steinitz
It is well known that Wilhelm Steinitz wasn’t the most successful when it came to managing his finances and that he died in poverty.
What is lesser known that he also battled with mental issues. I first stumbled upon it on his Wikipedia page, which claims that he spent 40 days in mental Asylum in Moscow after his 1896 match against Lasker, and also that he died in a mental asylum in New York.
I was able to find sources that verify it is indeed so. First of all, the book Wilhelm Steinitz: 1st Chess Champion states that in 1896:
More importantly, an article on the reliable source – the website Chesshistory – by Edward Winter, titled Steinitz versus God provides us with the following quotes from reliable sources:
6) Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Steinitz was not the only player from the end of the 19th century to suffer from a mental disorder. American hero Harry Nelson Pillsbury’s is an even more tragic example.
Pillsbury’s story is well-known. He shocked the chess world by winning chess tournament in Hastings in 1895, got overpowered by Lasker in St.Petersburg in 1895, continued playing for several years and then became seriously ill due to a syphilis infection, which cost him his life in 1906 – at 34 years of age.
His mental problems – a direct consequence of the rapidly progressing illness – are less-known. After he got hospitalized in 1905, contemporary newspapers described him as ‘temporarily insane’. According to yet another fantastic Chesshistory article, titled Pillsbury’s Torment, he even attempted suicide by jumping from the fourth floor of the hospital where he was being treated for mental disorders.
7) Akiba Rubinstein
There are several accounts that the great Polish player, Akiba Rubinstein, spent his last 30 years regularly visiting mental institutions. According to his Wikipedia page:
In Russian Silhouettes, in the chapter against Vitolins, Sosonko mentions him as an example of a chess player who lost his sanity:
It has to be mentioned, though that Edward Winter seriously doubted all these claims in his article Akiba Rubinstein’s Later Years:
8) Albin Planinc
Even though it didn’t have the worst consequence, the story of Slovenian Grandmaster Albin Planinc is no less sad and tragic.
Planinc rose to prominence after winning the 1969 Ljubljana tournament, ahead of 10 grandmasters despite the fact that he was working shifts in the local bicycle factory. But he really shocked the chess world in 1973, when he won the strong IBM Amsterdam tournament, together with Petrosian – ahead of Spassky, Andersson, Donner, and Ribli. It seemed to everyone that great career was in the making.
Alas, Caissa had other plans. Starting from approximately 1975, an apparent mental disorder started taking its toll on Planinc. He was performing poorly and living in his own world, avoiding all social contact during tournaments.
In 1979, he played his final tournament before retiring from chess. I couldn’t find any information what he did for a living from that point onward. What is known is that he was living together with his mother in a small flat and constantly fighting his own demons.
He spent his final years in the mental institution in Ljubljana. According to the Slovenian biographical movie Total Gambit (Totalni Gambit), shortly after his mother died in 2008 – in the very same mental institution – Planinc also departed this world. His girlfriend’s words from the same movie, full of sorrow and pain, speak for themselves:
9) Lembit Oll
Estonian Grandmaster Lembit Oll is a better-known name on this list and, unfortunately, the highest rated player who decided to end his life prematurely. He was the leading Estonian Grandmaster in the 90s. At his peak, he reached 2650 ELO and was the 25th ranked player in the world.
His mental issues started in 1996 after he divorced his wife and lost custody of his two sons. Although he was prescribed anti-depressants, the hole he found himself in was too deep. On 17 May 1999, he jumped out of the window of his 4th-floor apartment in Tallinn.
Oll was just 33 at a time.
10) Georgy Ilivitsky
No less tragic is the case of a little known Soviet International Master Georgy Ilivitsky. Even though he is virtually forgotten today,6 he was one of the strongest Soviet Masters after World War II. Some of his notable results include third place in the 1955 Soviet Championship (together with Botvinnik, Petrosian and Spassky, just half a point behind Geller and Smyslov and ahead of Keres and Taimanov) and victories in matches over Isaac Boleslavsky (1944), Alexey Suetin (1950) and Ludek Pachman (1956).
Alas, he was unable to make further progress. And life was tough for Soviet masters who didn’t make it to the very top. Ilivitsky didn’t get many opportunities to play outside the Soviet Union and had to gradually give up chess. This feeling of failure and abandonment haunted him during his entire life. When he was 68, he decided life has become unbearable and committed suicide by jumping from the window – apparently inspired by the afore-mentioned Nabokov’s novel The Defense.
11)Pertti Poutiainen
Another tragic story reminiscent of Lembit Oll and Georgy Ilivitsky. Pertti Poutiainen was the Champion of Finland in 1974 and 1976. He was awarded the title of International Master in 1976. Alas, according to Boris Gulko 7:
Poutiainen took his life on June 11, 1978.
Examples such as Oll, Ilivitsky, Poutiainen, Vitolins and Grigoryan show how merciless the system in the Soviet Union was. It was the perfect example of “winner-takes-it-all”, where the top Grandmasters enjoyed great privileges at the expenses of everyone below their level. Evgeny Sveshnikov, one of the most vocal fighters for the rights of chess players also pointed it out. From his Wikipedia page:
12) Shankar Roy
The most recent, but no less tragic example of a chess player succumbing to depression is Bengali International Master, Shankar Roy. Roy – an employee of Eastern Railway, represented India in several international competitions and won the senior state championship in four successive years from 1995.
Roy has been suffering from depression for several years and already tried to take his life in the past by setting himself on fire. After the death of his father from blood cancer on April 25, 2012, he made the second attempt and hanged himself from a ceiling using his wife’s scarf.
He was only 38 years old at a time.
FINAL WORDS?
Even though the majority of the examples on this list (apart from Roy Shankar) happened from the past, mental illnesses are very much topical even today. According to pretty much any study out there, depression and anxiety have been on the rise in the world in general. And I think they might also be on the rise in the chess world, with all the pressure revolving winning prizes, chasing norms and making it as a chess professional involved.
Is there something we chess players can do about it?
First of all, we can stop stigmatizing mental disorders. Impairing their significance and looking down upon people who have to deal with them. Stating you seek help because you are depressed should not be considered as a sign of weakness, but on the contrary – a sign of enormous strength.
Secondly and more importantly, the best advice I can offer is to start paying attention to other chess players. 8
Yes, our game is full of peculiar and eccentric people. But as much as they are socially inept, many of them are alone in their misery and crave for human contact.
So go to the hall and talk to people.
Approach that “weird guy” nobody wants to approach.
Analyze with an elderly master and listen to his the stories from his past – as much as you find them boring.
Don’t make fun of lower rated players – especially in youth categories.
Don’t create additional pressure or reprimand anyone for their losses.
Show people you care about them. Especially those who need someone to care about them the most.
Because you never know.
You might save someone’s life.