Ernest Hemingway

Bill Walton, an extremely close friend of Ernest Hemingway, called him a classic manic-depressive. Medical records cited in Mary Dearborn’s recent biography of Hemingway confirm that, even as early as the 1920s, Hemingway began to exhibit what medical professionals viewed to be manic episodes. More recently, new studies are speculating that Hemingway instead suffered from Traumatic Brain Injury from concussions, which led to his development of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease. While both are certainly capable of being true independently of one another, my own experience of TBI inducing Bipolar Disorder makes Hemingway’s story resonate deeply with me. In truth, the world will never know what mental illness plagued the life of Ernest Hemingway, but we will always remember the wisdom of his words and the passion of his outlook on life.