Singer Mayrai Carey lived with a bipolar disorder for 17 years, hiding the diagnosis. She was afraid that it would destroy her career

On April 11, the singer and actress Mayraia Carey told People that she lived with a mental disorder for many years, not receiving treatment

Carey became famous in the early 1990s, to date, she had already received five Grammy awards. In 2001, she was hospitalized with a nervous breakdown and physical depletion, after which they diagnosed the “bipolar disorder of the second type” . Life in this state is divided into periods of depression and hypomanic episodes, during which a person experiences a rise in mood and a surge of energy.

Carey says that she was frightened of the diagnosis and did not become treated. “I refused to believe it,” she said in an interview with People. “I did not want to live with a shameful diagnosis, which will be forever glued to me and probably break my career.” The singer admits: she convinced herself that the only way to cope with the disease is to pretend that she does not exist.

Carey says that the episodes of hypomania, inevitable in her disease, she took for severe sleep disorders. “In fact, this was not ordinary insomnia. I was not just lying in bed, counting sheep. I worked, worked and worked, but in the end I just struck on the wall, ”recalls Carey. She says that in such periods she was easily annoyed and constantly afraid to bring people. Depressive periods, according to the singer, were expressed in the fact that she had almost no strength. “I felt very sad and lonely - and blamed myself that I was not doing enough for my career.”

The media have repeatedly wrote about eccentric actions and the complex character of the singer

In particular, in 2001, the MTV channel reported that during the nervous breakdown, Mayrai Carey broke the glasses and plates in the hotel room and accidentally cut her leg. Right before the hospitalization, Carey left a confused vocal message on her website, where she said that she did not understand what was happening to her, and could not trust anyone. “Please understand, and this is really true, I don’t release music not because I don’t want to make it for you. I do not recognize the defeat because I am not defeated. I know that all this sounds like nonsense, but I just want to tell all the fans that I love you. You will soon have my new album, and I can rest a little, ”said Carey in her handling.

According to the singer, until recently, she lived in constant fear and isolation, fearing that someone would reveal her secret. In 2014, Carey broke up with her husband and father of their two children, rapper and actor Nick Knnon. Two years later, she announced the engagement with Australian millionaire James Paqueer, but six months later their relationship also ended. In November 2017, her guard Michael Anello accused the singer of sexual harassment. According to him, the singer deliberately made sexual acts so that he saw this, and once met him in translucent open linen and forced her to rearrange her luggage. Anllo also claims that Carey insulted him and other employees of the security agency, calling them “racists”, “Nazis”, “skinheads” and “members of the Ku-Klux-Klan ”. About whether the guard filed a lawsuit against the court, nothing was reported.

For the past two years, Carey called the most difficult in her life; She recently decided to seek psychiatric help

Now the singer is undergoing a course of drug treatment and says that she feels much better. According to Carey, she receives all the necessary help, surrounded herself with positive people and is going to return to her favorite activity - music.

She explains that she told about the disease so that other people with a similar problem do not feel lonely. “[The disease] can be terribly isolating you,” said the singer. “But the disease does not define you as a person.” She does not define me, and I will not let her prevail over me. ”

Other celebrities told about their struggle against bipolar disorder at different times: singer Shineid Okonnor , soloist The Cranberries Dolores Oʼriordan and actress Carrie Fisher .

Olga Strachovskaya