In 2001, a then 31-year-old Mariah Carey tottered on to the set of the popular MTV show Total Request Live pushing a cart full of ice cream.
Her appearance, according to flustered host Carson Daly, was completely unannounced. The singer proceeded to perform a striptease of sorts, removing her lavender t-shirt to reveal a halter top and shorts, before passing out icy poles to baffled audience members.
“If you don’t have ice cream in your life, sometimes you might just go a little bit crazy,” she said.
It was very clear to see that all was not well.
Soon after, on 25 July 2001, Carey checked into a New York hospital with what was described as “an emotional and physical breakdown” brought on by exhaustion.
Two weeks later she was released from the psychiatric facility. And a year after that, seemingly recovered, Carey insisted in an interview with USA Today, that it had been “burning the candle at both ends and in the middle” that had caused her meltdown.
LISTEN: Is it problematic that people are wearing necklaces with their mental illness on it? The Mamamia Out Loud team discuss.
But on Wednesday, almost 17 years after these events took place, Carey told us a different story. One she’d kept hidden while living in “constant fear” that it would be exposed.
During that hospital stay, she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder.
“Until recently I lived in denial and isolation and in constant fear someone would expose me,” Carey told People magazine.
“It was too heavy a burden to carry and I simply couldn’t do that anymore. I sought and received treatment, I put positive people around me and I got back to doing what I love — writing songs and making music.”
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I also have bipolar 2. I want people to realise that bipolar is a spectrum disorder. Not everyone is affected in the same way or according to the clinical definitions. Factors such as your personality, family & friends situation, past abuse, drug & alcohol use, diet, exercise, the right medication etc etc all play a part in how it impacts you. Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is essential to staying well. I have a successful career in a management position and have a husband of over 20 years and 2 beautiful children. It hasn’t had a great impact on my parenting as some may suggest it would. It’s a tough road keeping afloat sometimes though and I’ve spent a lot of my adult years suffering while still maintaining a job and family responsibilities. It can be very isolating as well. I find I can make friends when I’m well but when I’m depressed, it’s very difficult to maintain them because I have zero energy, feel totally helpless and can’t bare to be near anyone (among other things!). On top of that, the rare occasions I’ve been hypomanic I’ve burnt bridges as well so it has left me with very little support. I keep my illness hidden and that’s because of my direct experience of discrimination. Very few people understand this illness and the media are very inaccurate with their reporting of it which perpetuates the stigma and generates this ridiculous public fear that people with bipolar are dangerous in some way. There are other kinds of stigma too. I will never be able to get travel insurance, for example, because I am labelled with ‘bipolar’ despite the fact I am very compliant with my treatment program and live a healthy, successful life.
I am grateful when celebrities come out with their mental illness and it does give me a glimmer of hope that one day, I won’t have to face discrimination or stigma again. I’m not holding my breath though.
I’m pretty impressed by the last Tweeter, who supposedly works in mental health. For her to be able to diagnose someone she’s never met, based only on what she’s read about her in the media, well, she must be some kind of medical wizard! Do other doctors know this is possible? Think how much time it will save if you don’t actually have to meet people in order to diagnose them!
In all seriousness, while I don’t know much about BPD, to me it might explain quite a lot of Mariah’s seemingly ‘strange’ behaviour. I hope she’s not taking this sort of insulting response to heart.
To be fair, when you are a doctor, it is sometimes easy to pick garden-variety diagnoses and syndromes in strangers (or conversely, call bull dust on some claims made on the internet or by people at dinner parties and the like). I'm not a psychiatrist, but I can appreciate the point the Tweeter is making about narcissistic qualities versus the typical bipolar presentation/affect.