Published by the University of Oslo, the Suicide Research and Prevention Unit. First published in the Norwegian journal Suicidologi, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1999), pp. 3-6, utgis av Universitetet i Oslo, Nasjonalt senter for selvmordsforskning og -forebygging.
The Norwegian writer Henrik Ibsen knew the problem of suicide through personal experience. As a young man he experienced adversity both as a writer and a theatre employee. When Ibsen married Suzannah Thoresen in 1858 he also took up the position of Director of the Norwegian Theatre in Christiania (Oslo), a position he had difficultly filling, and which in a letter to his colleague Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Norwegian author and Nobel laureate, he later characterized as an induced abortion repeated daily. His work in the theatre consumed all his time, and his writing suffered. While he had written play after play in the years preceding 1858, his production now suffered an extended hiatus, while he was unable to satisfy his commitments as a director of the theatre. Previously punctilious and conscientious, Ibsen now underwent what perhaps can best be described as a personality transformation; more and more he was to be found in low-down pubs, he let his appearance go and alcohol became his regular "comfort". Ibsen's mother-in-law, Danish-Norwegian writer Magdalene Thoresen, later spoke euphemistically of the poet's condition in the years around 1860 as "a strong attack of nervous fever", while contemporary and more reliable sources have given accounts of something that should probably be called his deep depression. According to his wife Suzannah and his friend from younger days, Lorentz Dietrichson, Ibsen's condition around 1860 was so serious that he had considered committing suicide.
