MONDAY, APRIL 6 This week of convicted terrorists, deadly weather, and history-altering, justice-enabling, absolutely horrifying cell-phone video kicks off with the saga of Fredric Brandt, the 65-year-old “dermatologist to the stars!” whose pioneering Botox treatments and other dermatological wizardry made him a revered source for such notable skin-havers as Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow—until yesterday, when Brandt was found dead in his Miami home after committing suicide. Hogging the spotlight as news of Brandt’s death spread: reports that Brandt was “devastated” by comparisons to a dermatologist character on the newish Netflix series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, played by Martin Short in a distinctly Fredric Brandt–like wig. “The show definitely deeply hurt him,” said Brandt’s publicist, Jacquie Trachtenberg, to the Hollywood Reporter. “He was being made fun of because of the way he looks… But the show was not the reason for his depression, and it was not the reason he would take his own life.” Trachtenberg’s assertions are backed up by suicide experts, who agree any single-factor theory of suicide is usually bunk. “The risk of looking just at the precipitating event is that it does not help us to understand what leads people to take their lives,” said Dr. Jill Harkavy-Friedman to New York magazine. “Your distressor is the thing that we see, but it doesn’t mean it’s the cause.” Instead, Harkavy-Friedman suggested, society should focus on the big, prevalent, always-and-forever risk factors for suicide: depression, substance abuse, and family history…
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