Mariah Carey Has Bipolar II Disorder
Talking about your mental health issues with a therapist in a dimly lit, Philips Hue-glazed office (therapists DO have the best lighting) is hard enough, but Mariah Carey has decided to talk about her mental health issues with everyone in the new issue of People. Mimi says she’s on meds and is doing fine now, but for a while, she was in a bad, dark, scary place (a place scarier than a hostel). She says she was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder in 2001 after having a physical and mental meltdown. No need to Google, Mimi’s ice cream cart mental breakdown on TRL happened in 2001. And now everything makes sense.
48-ish-year-old Mimi may have been diagnosed with bipolar over 16 years ago, but she only recently got treated for it. She lived in a crystal bubble (made by Baccarat, of course, dahling) of denial for a long time and was also scared that someone would expose her and tell her secret.
“I didn’t want to carry around the stigma of a lifelong disease that would define me and potentially end my career. … I was so terrified of losing everything, I convinced myself the only way to deal with this was to not deal with this.”
Part of not dealing with having bipolar disorder was telling herself that she just had insomnia. But it wasn’t like Mimi was just lounging in her diamond-encrusted princess canopy bed while counting lambs (and yes, Mimi makes her most devoted lambs twirl in front of her one by one as she counts them). She was working all the time, and constantly feeling guilty about possibly letting people down and not doing enough for her career. She now knows she was going through hypomanic episodes.
Mimi currently gets therapy and is taking medication, which is working for her. She decided to publicly talk about having bipolar disorder after celebrities like The Rock and Demi Lovato talked about their own struggles with depression.
“I’m just in a really good place right now, where I’m comfortable discussing my struggles with bipolar II disorder. 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. It does not have to define you and I refuse to allow it to define me or control me.”
Mimi’s ex-fiance James Packer also recently talked about his own mental health issues and resigned from his company to get treatment.
On one hand, I slow clap for People for putting the Unicorn Butterfly Hello Kitty Empress’ bipolar struggles on the cover. But on the other hand, I’m throwing a burning side-eye at People for putting Kate Gosselin’s return to TV (again) on the cover, because that mess will send anyone into a deep depression. That cover needed to be ALL MIMI. Pink slips need to be written for this!
Pic: People