His Dad's Death, Not Plath's, Spurred Hughes Suicide

Nicholas Hughes’ depression and eventual suicide were caused by the loss of his father in 1998, the Times reports. The younger Hughes and his father shared a special bond, and when Ted Hughes died, renowned fish biologist Nicholas “lost the relationship that mattered most to him,” a friend said of Hughes, whose mother, poet Sylvia Plath, committed suicide in 1963.

Hughes’ scientific mind could comprehend, but not solve, his depression. “The absolute tragedy is that he understood everything that was happening in his brain inside out,” the friend adds.
(More suicide stories.)