What do we have in common with Winston Churchill, Michaelangelo and Isaac Newton?   Like us, they all suffered from depression!!!

Depression is an illness that can affect anyone, whether they are rich, poor, famous, successful .... many well-known people have experienced this sometimes crippling condition.

We are putting together a list of well known Australians who suffer or have suffered depression, and will have a little information about them and their experiences here.   We also have a list of   famous people   from around the world who have had depression.

• Bev Aisbett - Author of "Taming The Black Dog" and other well known books
• Neil Cole - Victorian Politician and Playwright
• Su Cruickshank - Entertainer
• Adam Lindsay Gordon - Poet/Writer
• Garry MacDonald - Actor
• John McGrath - Chair, Mental Health Council of Australia
• Barcroft Boake - Author - 'Where The Dead Men Lie'
• Adriana Xenides - Game Show Star
• Rachel Griffiths - Actress
• Leah Hudson - TV Presenter
• Bill Leak - Cartoonist, listen to an interview at http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2005/s1528922.htm

• Lionel Aldridge - Football Player
• Buzz Aldrin - Astronaut
• Antoin Artaud - Dramatist, Artist (may have had schizophrenia)
• Syd Barrett of the band Pink Floyd
• Ludwig von Beethoven - composer
• Lord Byron - Poet
• Cher - actress / entertainer
• Winston Churchill - English Prime Minister
• John Cleese - actor best known for his role as Basil Fawlty in the series, Fawlty Towers, and Monty Python.
• Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) - soldier, statesman and Lord Protector of England (1652-1658) after he declined the crown after Charles I was beheaded in 1649 during the Civil War.
• Jefferson Davis - President of the Confederate States of America
• Charles Dickens - Author
• Patty Duke - Actress
• Carrie Fisher - Actress
• Peter Green - Guitarist for Fleetwood Mac
• Ernest Hemingway - 1954 Nobel Laureate in Literature
• Linda Hamilton - Actress - The Terminator
• Sir Julian Huxley - Depression is described in his autobiography
• T. H. Huxley - Zoologist
• Kay Jamison - Professor of Psychiatry/Author
• John Keats - poet
• Vivien Leigh - actress
• Primo Levi - Jewish - Italian Writer
• Meriwether Lewis - Explorer
• Abraham Lincoln - American President
• Mary Todd Lincoln - wife of Abraham Lincoln
• Michelangelo - Artist
• Spike Milligan - Actor / Comedian
• John Nash - Mathematician / Nobel Prize Winner
• Isaac Newton - Physicist
• Vaclav Nijinsky - Famous Russian Dancer
• Marie Osmond - Author
• Sylvia Plath - poet
• Edgar Allan Poe - writer
• Ezra Pound - poet
• Paul Robeson - Actor and Singer
• General Sherman - Army Commander
• William Styron - Writer/Author of Darkness Visible:a memoir of madness
• Ted Turner - Founded and runs CNN
• Vincent Van Gogh - painter
• Evelyn Waugh - English writer and novelist, probably best known for Brideshead Revisited
• Lewis Wolpert - British Embryologist
• Virginia Woolf - a major British novelist, essayist, and critic

Books by or about peoples' struggles and successes overcoming depression or manic depression:

Ted Turner: founded and runs CNN, and married to Jane Fonda.His book, "It Ain't as Easy as It Looks", (US $16) - includes discussion of his use of Lithium and struggles with manic depression.

If you have a service or product that may be of assistance to people with depression or a related condition, or their support people, please contact us for details on how to be listed or contribute to this site.