The Stress of Being a Modern Celebrity: Impact on Mental/Emotional Health

The other side of how stress can impact celebrities comes in the form of mental breakdowns.  As I said in my other page on the stressfulness of being a celebrity in the modern era, which you can find here, mass media and increased watchfulness on celebrities has made being famous very difficult.  Some have even been pushed so far that they just cannot take it anymore and their mind just snaps.  It can be a very sad thing to watch as this can sometimes end in tragedy.   Of course sometimes talented people, musicians in particular it seems, are already plagued by a form of mental illness.

Sinead O’Connor is a very interesting case.  In the late eighties and early nineties she became more famous for her controversial outbursts than for her music.  Some of the more famous ones are announcing her support for the IRA and her protest of the Grammy awards.

But by far the most well known controversy is her 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live where at the end of her performance she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II (shown below).

“Fight the real enemy” she says after she rips it up.  She says this referencing how the church worked to cover the priest child abuse scandals.   It’s quite thought provoking because of the deep seeded Catholic roots in Ireland that she would do something liked this, afterwards she argued that she was still catholic and very devout and that it was about “the office and the organization” not “the man.”  This a far cry from a celebrity like Padraig Pearse who would have died before disrespected the Catholic Church.

O’Connor’s most recent controversy came earlier this year actually.  In may of 2016 she was missing for a day after biking in Chicago.  She was found and hospitalized and classified as suicidal.  She had been diagnosed as bipolar but now refutes that as a misdiagnosis.

Image result for sinead o connor bike

Pictured above is a recent picture of O’Connor at a performance in London in August.

There is no details really as to why she acts this way.  There are a few possibilities; maybe she cracked under the pressure of being famous, as many celebrities have before, or maybe she really is bipolar and needs help.  Either way Sinead O’Connor is a good example of how human celebrities really are.

For more of:

Sinead O’Connor

The Pogues

The Influence of Music

Home Page

Citations:

“Sinead O’Connor.” Biography.com. A&E Networks Television, 19 May 2016. Web. 02 Dec. 2016.