Kōrero: Suicide

Iris Wilkinson, better known by her pen name Robin Hyde, was a very distinguished New Zealand journalist and writer. In August 1939, in her attic room in Kensington, London, she poisoned herself at the age of 33. Her death came after more than a decade of depression. She had spent four years in Auckland Mental Hospital as a voluntary patient, where she battled her mental illness to produce three novels and two collections of poetry. Robin Hyde, like many people who have killed themselves, struggled with depression.