Mental Health Notes

Male Celebrities And Mental Illness

by Alicia Sparks, Mental Health Notes on June 10th, 2008

This post is part of Celebrity Health Week at the b5media Health & Wellness Channel. For more information about Celebrity Health Week posts here at Mental Health Notes, visit Introducing Celebrity Health Week: Celebrities And Mental Illness.

We covered female celebrities with mental illnesses yesterday, and in this Celebrity Health Week post we’ll take a look at some male celebrities who have a mental illness - or had, in the case of the deceased. We’ll look at actors, singers, and other well-known male figures.

Please note that I am not an authority on celebrities and mental illness. For a celebrity to be on this list, either he or a spouse or reliable family member must have publicly discussed - verbally or otherwise - his mental illness, or, in the case of the deceased, professionals must have addressed it later on.

Read on.

In addition to the various male celebrities and well-known figures listed in yesterday’s Celebrities And Depression (including Owen Wilson, Mike Wallace, Rod Steiger, Terry Bradshaw, Tom Wolfe, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dick Cavett, Buzz Aldrin, Frederic Chopin, Abraham Lincoln, Eugene O’Neill, and Tennessee Williams), the following popular male figures have battled mental illness:

Dave Matthews, whose music has helped me numerous times through my own depression and who cannot marry me because he’s already married (and because Wenti simply would not go for it), has spoken about being depressed in his life.

Barret Robbins, formerly of the Raiders, has battled bipolar disorder and alcoholism.

John Nash, recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994 and the subject of A Beautiful Mind, lives with schizophrenia.

Earl Campbell, former football pro and current founder and president of Earl Campbell Meat Products, Inc., manages panic disorder and documented his life with panic disorder in The Earl Campbell Story: A Football Great’s Battle With Panic Disorder.

Willard Scott, former weather reporter for The Today Show, also deals with panic attacks.

Francis Ford Coppola, a world renowned filmmaker, is included in many directories of celebrities who have bipolar disorder.

Anthony Hopkins, a well-known actor, talked about his struggles with depression and alcoholism in a New York Times interview.

Sting, aka Gordon Sumner, has spoken of being manic depressive.

James Taylor, another brilliant musician, has spoken of depression.

Axel Rose, frontman of Guns N’ Roses and the singer of many of the songs on the soundtrack of my childhood, admitted to being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails has dealt with both depression and social anxiety disorder.

Freddie Prinze, Jr., actor, has spoken of his depression.

DMX, aka Earl Simmons, has admitted to having bipolar disorder.

Ben Stiller, hilarious actor, is pretty open about his bipolar disorder from what I gather.

Note that this is not a comprehensive list of male celebrities who have mental illness; it’s merely a list of the celebrities for whom I’ve found information. If you know of any others - and can provide credible sources - feel free to leave them in the comments.

Note, too, that many male political figures have been linked to mental illness (including Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Sen. Thomas Eagleton), as well as famous writers (such as James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway) but we’ll cover political figures and mental illness on Thursday and famous writers with mental illness on Friday.

Images: Newscom

Share This

POSTED IN: Bipolar Disorder, Depression, Famous Folk, Men, Mood Disorders, Panic Disorder, Psychotic Disorders, Schizophrenia, Self-Medication and Dual Diagnosis, Sites of Interest, Social Anxiety Disorder, Suicide