Hollywood’s Secret Bipolar Epidemic: From Mariah Carey to Selena Gomez and More

With muscles bulging on her sinewy frame, Linda Hamilton scaled the heights with the hit Terminator films. But the 68-year-old fought a desperate inner battle for 20 years before she was finally diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1994.

“I really was crashing and burning,” Hamilton said, adding she “spent many years, you know, not only looking for the answers but sort of self-medicating with drugs and alcohol as well, and was struggling to keep my marriages intact. It was at that point that someone wouldn’t let me out of his office. He said, ‘You are so seriously bipolar. You should not leave this office without me calling your primary physician and we need to get you on medicine!’”

Hamilton now follows a regimen of medication, diet and exercise: “My quality of life is more amazing than I ever could’ve imagined.”

All she wanted for Christmas was inner peace! Even as she became one of the most successful singers of all time, the 55-year-old songbird suffered severe insomnia and bouts of working like a maniac before collapsing.

Things came to a head in 2001 when Mariah Carey began posting bizarre messages and shocked audiences with an impromptu striptease on the MTV show Total Request Live. She received psychiatric care in a hospital, and that was when she learned she was bipolar — and kept her condition hidden from the public for another 17 years!

“I lived in denial and isolation and in constant fear someone would expose me,” she said. “It was too heavy a burden to carry and I simply couldn’t do that anymore.”

Carey said she has finally found balance.

“I’m actually taking medication that seems to be pretty good,” she said. “Finding the proper balance is what is most important.”

The 30-year-old “You Should Be Sad” singer — born Ashley Frangipane — has soared to great heights with No. 1 hits such as “Without Me,” but she has also experienced bottomless lows from both bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), both of which were diagnosed when she was 17 after spending two weeks in a psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt.

Halsey fought against her emotional state by using drugs and living on the streets of New York City.

As her singing career took off, Halsey found she was more creative musically when she was on the manic side of her manic depression — but she admitted she checked herself into psych wards whenever she felt she was going over the edge!

“I’ve been committed twice since [I became] Halsey, and no one’s known about it,” she said. “I just know when to get in front of it.”

Demi Lovato became a Disney child star at the tender age of 17 — but the actress and singer, now 32, first entered rehab at 18 after suffering from bulimia and self-harm — and said she was happy to hear she had bipolar disorder!

“I was so relieved that I had finally had a diagnosis,” she said. “I had spent so many years struggling, and I didn’t know why I was a certain way in dealing with depression at such extreme lows when I seemingly had the world in front of me just ripe with opportunities.”

Still, Lovato’s life has continued to be an emotional roller coaster, with more stints in rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. In 2018, she nearly died from an overdose of opioids.

Now clean and sober, Lovato admitted her own immaturity played a part, with doctors saying her troubles were “not because I was bipolar. I had to grow the f--- up!”

The 64-year-old Muscles from Brussels turned from bodybuilding to become one of the biggest international action film stars, but it took a heavy toll.

Jean-Claude Van Damme admitted during a three-year period from 1993 to 1996 he was spending $10,000 a week on cocaine to fuel his hectic film schedule! But he learned in 1998 that his drug use was a form of self-medication for bipolar disorder. And while he is no longer an A-list action actor, he claimed to be at peace with himself and his condition.

“Sometimes you’re gonna like me, and sometimes you’re gonna hate me,” he said. “But what can I do? I’m not perfect. I’m an extreme bipolar, and I’m taking medication for this. When I was young, I was suffering those swing moods. In the morning, the sky was blue [when I was] going to school, and to me, the sky was black. I was so sad!”

Former Disney star turned hit pop singer Selena Gomez, 32, said her mood swings were so paralyzing she sometimes had trouble getting out of bed for weeks at a time — and even contemplated suicide!

Then, in 2018, she suffered a form of psychosis in which she was hearing voices. After numerous stays in mental health facilities, Gomez was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2020. But even after the diagnosis, the brunette cutie still struggled, saying the medication for her disorder made her feel like she was “gone, there was no part of me that was there anymore.”

Doctors helped her find a better drug regimen to cope with her disorder. And while Gomez said managing her condition “is a lot of hard work,” the Only Murders in the Building star’s career is now back on track.

Raven-haired beauty Catherine Zeta-Jones, 55, shocked fans when, seemingly out of the blue, she checked into a mental health facility in 2011. At the time, she was stressed by her now 80-year-old hubby Michael Douglas’ throat cancer and an ongoing court battle with ex-wife Diandra. But then she revealed that she had bipolar disorder.

“I’m not the kind of person who likes to shout out my personal issues from the rooftops but with my bipolar becoming public, I hope fellow sufferers will know it is completely controllable,” said the Oscar- and Tony-winning actress. “I hope I can help remove any stigma attached to it, and that those who don’t have it under control will seek help with all that is available to treat it.”

The loudmouth Jaws actor has been open about his bipolar condition and doesn’t even see it as a negative!

Richard Dreyfuss, 77, called it a “brain-based health condition,” adding, “I’ve enjoyed my illness!”

He believed it had heightened his creativity as an actor and allowed him to overcome personal setbacks. But he also recalled a time before he was on the strict regimen of medication he takes today to control his symptoms and instead relied on drugs and alcohol to cope.

“It took me until I was in my late 40s and early 50s before I really understood what the phrase ‘medicating yourself’ meant,” he said. “Until then, I had accepted all the phrases that came at me in the culture: you’re a drug addict, you’re drug-dependent.”

Dreyfuss said he has no embarrassment about being bipolar — “‘stigma’ is a word that should be kicked away … because it’s a condition.”

The British-born actor and stand-up comic is brutally honest about his many psychiatric issues, including bulimia, p--- addiction, ADHD and drug abuse.

Russell Brand, 49, has also been accused of sexual assault, rape and emotional abuse by four women, including one who was 16 at the time. He denied the allegations.

He was diagnosed with depression when he was young.

“I went into the hospital when I was 19 for depression and for cutting,” he said. “I wasn’t the person I wanted to be and I knew something was wrong.”

Finally, when he was 28, he got the diagnosis that changed his life — he was bipolar. Medication and quitting booze and drugs have helped him manage the condition.

Troubled pop princess Britney Spears had a mental breakdown in 2008 that landed her in a psych ward, where she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her father, Jamie Spears, was named her legal conservator that year, and in 2013, the songbird, 43, claimed he forced her off her regular bipolar medication and compelled her to take the powerful mood-stabilizing drug lithium, which she said left her feeling drunk.

“I am bipolar, have been hospitalized for it, and had terrible experiences,” she told the court as she fought to end the conservatorship in 2013. “I, too, had life stuff — not biological brain stuff — going on that a quick conversation would have uncovered.”

After the conservatorship was ended in 2021, Britney said she was “on the right medication.” Fans speculated she might not be taking her meds regularly, though, citing a series of wild social media posts in which she sometimes was elated and other times despondent.