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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. At the dinner party, how does Styron react to the four friends?
(a) He is catatonic and does not speak.
(b) He brags through the whole dinner party about his accomplishments.
(c) He gets angry and speaks hatefully to them.
(d) He cries throughout the dinner because of his depression.

2. What is the hardest piece of writing Styron attempted during his depression?
(a) His goodbye letter.
(b) He stopped writing altogether.
(c) Poetry, due to its emotional nature.
(d) Any upbeat writing.

3. What does Styron call the condition of the person suffering unrelenting depression?
(a) Potentially criminal people.
(b) The position of being in a black fog.
(c) The situation of the walking wounded.
(d) A sure suicide.

4. How did Lincoln attempt to vanquish death due to his own hand?
(a) By being the best family man he could.
(b) Through his work that was valued by posterity.
(c) By taking medicines prescribed to him.
(d) By declaring war.

5. What effect does the failure of medicines to act quickly have on the depressed person?
(a) They get better even though the medicines don't work.
(b) They give up and do something different.
(c) Many of them commit suicide.
(d) It keeps them in a state of anxiety and hopelessness.

6. What term does Styron give to the loss of a parent or something early in life?
(a) Dark depression.
(b) Insurmountable loss.
(c) Incomplete mourning.
(d) Lifelong loss.

7. What new approach does Styron's psychiatrist use?
(a) Pharmacological, without physical and mental support.
(b) Disattachment therapy.
(c) Psychoanalysis.
(d) DSM recommendations.

8. What is the third stage of psychological development in depression?
(a) Withdrawal.
(b) Extreme fear of abandonment.
(c) Seclusion.
(d) Suicide.

9. What sort of people does Styron say is more prone to depression?
(a) Poor people.
(b) Artistic people.
(c) People with above average intelligence.
(d) People who have lost loved ones.

10. What hope does Styron say a depressed person can have?
(a) That family and friends will be supportive.
(b) That it will eventually subside and healing will occur.
(c) That suicide will relieve their distress.
(d) That medicines can cure depression and it will never recur.

11. What does the depression and sense of hopelessness cause Styron to do?
(a) Write even more in an attempt to understand it.
(b) Go to bed for hours every day.
(c) Try to kill himself.
(d) Run away from his wife and home.

12. Why does Styron consult with Dr. Gold, who he didn't feel could really help him?
(a) To receive the medicines he thought would help him.
(b) To look good to the press.
(c) To get help for his friend, Camus.
(d) To satisfy his wife, who demanded he get treatment.

13. What happens to persons in physical pain that is not experienced with mental pain?
(a) A superhuman ability to endure physical pain for a time.
(b) Mental pain doesn't disable one as much as physical pain.
(c) Ones in physical pain receive medicine but don't get better.
(d) Depression hurts worse.

14. How does Styron respond to the experimental approach?
(a) He immediately got better.
(b) He didn't notice anything, but was hopeful so did better.
(c) He demanded another drug.
(d) He was in mental anguish, wanting immediate relief.

15. According to Styron, what is the greatest fallacy about suicide?
(a) That all depressed people commit suicide.
(b) That people only have to "buck up."
(c) That suicide is a painless way to go.
(d) The idea that there is one particular cause.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does Styron say is absent in depression that causes it to be so difficult to endure?

2. What does Styron say family and friends should continue to do for the depressed person?

3. What is Styron's first dream in many months?

4. What piece of music moves Styron to his breakthrough and hospitalization?

5. What does the doctor tell Styron about his medicine, Halcion, and its dosage?

(see the answer keys)

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