He had a great understanding of emotions for a sociopath. His rival Gore Vidal, on the other hand, it wouldn’t surprise me at all. He was a bastard’s bastard and unable of expressing warmth or compassion even in his fiction.
Townes Van Zandt suffered from depression as a young man, and had some fairly terrifying sounding treatment in the early 60s that left him pretty damaged, including short term memory loss. It seems like his drug and alcohol addictions were a response to both the illness and unsuccessful treatment. I’ve read a biography of him and it sounds like he had a generally unhappy life, despite seeming to have a happy childhood.
I was going to say Gary Busey, but upon reading his wiki, I discovered that it would have been caused by an accident injury. It’s mentioned under the Personal Life header.
I don’t like posting this, since I am a huge fan of hers. But it’s pretty obvious Joni Mitchell suffers from at least one mental disorder.
Convicted murderer Phil Spector. “He has said during interviews that at some point he was diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder.”
Frances Farmer
Counting Crows lead singer/chief lyricist Adam Duritz claims to suffer from a dissociative disorder.
Also, Swedish black metal musician Per “Dead” Ohlin suffered from a few disorders. Reports vary on the cause (ice skating accident or beaten by a bully as a child), but he suffered a ruptured spleen, and was technically dead for a few minutes.
From his wiki entry:
He went on to commit suicide. He slit his own throat, and both of his wrists. Right after, he put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
One of his bandmates found the body, and took pictures of it. They used one of the pictures as the cover for their bootleg live album Dawn of the Black Hearts. I won’t link to the artwork, but it’s easily found using google.
His suicide note read:
It’s been speculated that Per suffered from Cotard Delusion, stemming from his ruptured spleen.
Are you referring to electro-convulsive therapy (ECT)? It could be a very brutal treatment back in the day; it’s much less so now and is only used when less drastic measures don’t work.
Is there a distinction to be made between a drug dilettante-turned-addict and someone who came by their mental illness, shall we say, organically? Or is the final result all that matters?
I understand Jonathan Winters was stuck in character as Maud for several months and spent lots of time institutionalized. “These voices are always screaming to get out,” he explained.
I’m in the middle of Werner Herzog’s documentary “My Best Fiend: Klaus Kinski” and hoo boy, did Mr. Kinski have ISSUES.
Yeesh.
Michael Jackson had more than his fair share.
ETA - what about Prince? He’s obviously nutty as a fruitcake, but is he mentally ill?
In my decidedly non-professional opinion, Ted Nugent is way beyond eccentric and I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a Robert Blake/Phil Spector waiting to happen.
Erin Moran from Happy Days is a sad and pitiful shell of a person due to obvious mental issues and substance abuse. Per entertainment sites Henry Winkler tried to help her out by getting her a role on the revival of Arrested Development but she couldn’t pull it together enough to do it.
Vidal could be a prick but that assessment is still rather harsh. He wasn’t incapable of expressing warmth or compassion so much as good at concealing it. Vidal’s reputation was that of a vitriolic cynical gadfly and overtly displaying warmth and compassion would be a sign of vulnerability that his many enemies could easily exploit. I do think toward the end of his life he do go down some weird rabbit holes (e.g., the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing was an inside job and Timothy McVeigh was a martyr) but that was due to age-related mental problems.
There’s been speculation in the press that Keanu Reeves is on the autism spectrum because he avoids eye contact.
Why are you reluctant to post it, and why are you calling it “obvious” as though it’s something you personally deduced rather than something that Mitchell has publicly discussed?
Mitchell has long acknowledged that she suffers from Morgellons syndrome, which is a mental illness. AFAICT it’s not definitively determined what kind of a mental illness Morgellons is: the mainstream opinion at present seems to be that it’s a psychosomatic disorder, whereas some researchers think it can be connected to detectable neurologic impairments.
But acting as though such conditions are shameful or that mentioning them somehow counts as disparagement is counterproductive for all mental illness sufferers.
But does she herself characterize her Morgellons as a mental illness? Because that would be kind of a paradox, since the point of Morgellons is that suffers think they really are infected/infested with a disease/parasite that the medical establishment has yet to recognize, whereas medical specialists think they are physically healthy and all manifestations are the result of some sort of mental disorder.
BTW, great post, I applaud and affirm your progressive views on mental illness.
Phil Ochs fell apart pretty spectacularly in the last years of his life, including taking on the alternate persona of “John Train” for several months… he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Jaco Pastorius, a hugely talented jazz bassist who was in Weather Report from 1976 to 1981, was destroyed by his bipolar disorder.
I’ve read that Drew Carey and Wayne Brady both suffer from depression.
Comedian Richard Jeni was diagnosed with severe clinical depression coupled with bouts of insomnia and psychotic paranoia.
I don’t remember seeing Kim Basinger mentioned. She is agoraphobic.
I had thought it might be Judy Garland, but certain details didn’t seem to fit for her.