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Mariah Carey reveals battle with bipolar disorder

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Mariah Carey reveals battle with bipolar disorder

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In an interview with American celebrity magazine People, Mariah Carey spoke out about her struggles with bipolar illness for the first time.

Despite receiving her first diagnosis in 2001 (after a hospitalization for a physical and emotional breakdown), the famous singer-songwriter admits that she “did not want to believe it.”

Carey said that she had just recently sought medical care.

She described it as “the hardest couple of years I’ve been through”.

Mariah said that despite selling more than 200 million albums and having 18 number one hits, she had endured years of suffering in silence while in the public eye.

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    Carey and her rapper and TV personality spouse Nick Cannon, with whom she shares kids Moroccan and Monroe, split in 2014. She announced her engagement to Australian millionaire James Parker in January 2016, however in October 2016, she said the two were no longer together.

    She told the magazine, “Until recently I lived in denial and isolation and in constant fear someone would expose me.”

    “It was too heavy a burden to carry and I simply couldn’t do that any more. 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.”

    For her bipolar II disease, which has led her to experience episodes of sadness and hypomania, which may result in irritability and sleeplessness, Carey stated she is now receiving counseling and taking medication.

    Carey, who is back in the studio working on an album coming later this year, says, “For a long time I thought I had a severe sleep disorder.”

    “But it wasn’t normal insomnia and I wasn’t lying awake counting sheep. I was working and working and working … I was irritable and in constant fear of letting people down. It turns out that I was experiencing a form of mania. Eventually I would just hit a wall. I guess my depressive episodes were characterized by having very low energy. I would feel so lonely and sad — even guilty that I wasn’t doing what I needed to be doing for my career.”

    Bipolar II is “characterized by a pattern of depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes, but not full-blown manic episodes,” according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).

    Following up on her 2014 album Me, Carey revealed to People that she has been in the studio creating her 15th album. I’m Mariah, the mysterious chanteuse. The album is anticipated to be the first offering from Carey’s brand-new partnership with Sony subsidiary Epic, Butterfly MC Records.

    Mariah’s experience demonstrates why mental health therapy is effective, as we all know. Mariah received treatment, is now thriving, and is following her passion, demonstrating that it is possible to manage your mental health. Mariah claimed she made the decision to disclose her diagnosis for precisely this reason.

    “I’m hopeful we can get to a place where the stigma is lifted from people going through anything alone. It can be incredibly isolating,” she told People. “It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me or control me.”

    In July 2017, it was revealed that Carey was co-executive producing a scripted drama on her life for American network Starz.

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