Sinéad O’Connor’s depression battle .
Depressed and alone, the Irish singer has poured her heart out in a distressing video. Where did it all go so wrong?
SHE exploded onto the music scene with a song so hauntingly beautiful it made her one of pop’s most enduring icons. Yet the tears that rolled down her cheeks spoke volumes of her inner suffering – and it’s that pain that now tragically seems to be consuming her.
The recent video Sinéad O’Connor posted on Facebook lays her private torture bare for the world to see. “I’m fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting,” the Irish singer says, sobbing throughout the 12-minute clip.
“Like all the millions and millions I know I’m one of, [I’m fighting] to stay alive every day.”
The video, which she filmed while alone in a motel room “somewhere in the a**e end of New in the USA, isn’t easy to watch.
But Sinéad (50) was determined to make it – and it’s a deeply personal document of her depression and the disease that knows no boundaries.
“I want everyone to know what it’s like, that’s why I’m making this video,” she says, her voice shaking uncontrollably.
“Mental illness, it’s like drugs, it doesn’t give a s**t who you are and equally what’s worse is the stigma.”
The singer, who was fêted for her brilliance and beauty after releasing the ballad Nothing Compares 2 U in the ’ 90s, feels invisible now, shunned by loved ones who have no time or patience for what she’s going through.
“Suddenly all the people who are supposed to be loving you and taking care of you are treating you like s**t. It’s like a witch hunt.
“There’s absolutely nobody in my life except my doctor, my psychiatrist – the est man on earth, who says I’m his hero – and that’s about the only f**king thing keeping me alive at the moment. And that’s kind of pathetic.”
WHILE Sinéad has shared suicidal posts before, her latest sparked enough concern among her fans for them to beg her family to step forward. Fellow singer Annie Lennox spoke up after viewing her friend’s “distressing call for help”.
“I realise Sinéad has some serious mental health issues but she appears to be completely out on a limb and I’m concerned for her safety,” Annie wrote on Facebook. “Are there no close friends or family who could be with her to give her some loving support? It’s terrible to see her in such a vulnerable state.”
Yet a few days later a message appeared on Sinéad’s Facebook page – posted by a friend – saying she was fine and not suicidal and had been admitted to a New Jersey hospital.
Things didn’t stop there. The Grammy winner was briefly released from hos-
ANNIE LENNOX ‘It’s terrible to see her in such a vulnerable state’
pital as she seemed happier after an upbeat video she posted.
In it she bizarrely called her past week the most beautiful week of her life.
But hours later she made another video saying she’s totally destroyed and calling herself a crazy bitch before heading back into hospital.
Sinéad’s personal life has been dogged by drama and self-destructive behaviour fuelled by depression and drug use.
She also earned a reputation for being unpredictable and has raised eyebrows for her volatile public outbursts on topics ranging from abortion to Miley Cyrus’ provocative pop image.
In 2007 she went public with her depression battle, telling talk-show queen Oprah Winfrey she’d been diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2003 and had attempted suicide on her 33rd birthday.
She revealed her bipolar disorder had been misdiagnosed and that doctors had confirmed she was actually suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, stemming from her “barbaric” childhood growing up with an abusive mother.
She sparked fears for her life in 2015 when she claimed on Facebook she’d overdosed, saying, “There’s no other way to get respect.”
Referring to her ongoing problems with her family, she said, “I’m invisible. I don’t matter a shred to anyone. No one has come near me. I’ve died a million times already with the pain of it.”
Sinéad later claimed her family had deserted her after she underwent a hysterectomy.
In the new video she hits out at her family again – specifically her former husbands and her four kids, Jake Reynolds (30), Roisin Waters (21), Shane Lunny (13) and Yeshua Bonadio (10) – for not looking after her.
“Hello, children of mine. Why is it f**king acceptable that your mother is living in a f**king travel lodge?”
The only people she speaks to are strangers on social media “who are kinder to me than my own loved ones. I’m a five-foot-four [1,64m] little f**king woman wandering the world for two years by myself. A sad state of affairs for a woman who’s been married four times and has four children.”
She also expressed sadness that Shane, whose father is Irish folk musician Dónal Lunny (70), was no longer allowed to visit her without a third party supervising the meeting.
Last year the No Man’s Woman singer went to the US in search of medical treatment, railing about how she hated Ireland and felt attacked and judged in her homeland.
She sparked fresh concerns for her health in May when she failed to return from a bike ride in suburban Chicago, triggering a police search. She was later found safe by the cops but said on Facebook she felt abandoned.
HER legal and financial woes can’t be helping Sinéad’s state of mind. She was recently slapped with a lawsuit for defamation and breach of contract by Fachtna O’Ceallaigh (70), her former manager and lover.
Fachtna managed Sinéad’s career from when she was just 17 until 2012 when she abruptly ended it. He claims she defamed him in a letter published on her and a fan’s website and is seeking damages of €500 000 (R7,7 million).
She also faced a $5 million (R65 million) defamation lawsuit from US funnyman Arsenio Hall earlier this year after she claimed he’d supplied drugs to late pop singer Prince and spiked her drink years earlier. She later apologised and Arsenio dropped the suit.
Around the same time she had to sell her seafront home in County Wicklow, Ireland, for €1 million (R15 million) less than she’d paid for it to settle a tax bill and pay a hefty fine.
In spite of appearing suicidal in her Facebook video, Sinéad insists she “doesn’t want to die. I want to stay alive, I’ve got children”. She hopes the clip – which was viewed half a million times in the first four days – is “somehow helpful” for the “millions and millions of people who are just like me, actually, who don’t necessarily have the resources I have in my heart or my purse for that matter”.
Sinéad’s post was praised for its bravery and for “showing the messy reality of mental illness”.
“It’s the wailing, ranting, desperate demon that secretly tortures millions,” Paris Lees, who also suffers from depression, wrote in Britain’s The Guardian. “Thank you, Sinéad, for giving this secret misery a face. We need to see it.”