CIt takes courage to say goodbye to Friends without too much explanation. But if one’s mental health is involved, one can only understand the choice of 24-year-old singer Mewwho suddenly left Maria De Filippi’s talent show together with her boyfriend Matthew on January 9th, leaving fans and a good group of haters to debate the reasons for her gesture for a few weeks.
Mew’s farewell to Amici: «Depression takes everything»
Today Mew posted a video on Instagram explaining her truth, a truth that talks about depression, eating disorders, the strength to face evil and pain. «Unfortunately» said the 24 year old «depression comes out even in the best moments of life and, in this case, it takes away hunger and energy. I had stopped eating, I tried not to show anything to anyone and I even succeeded, then I understood that you can feel bad and you can collapse but it’s important to talk about it.”
Mew, she says, came to doubt herself day after day: «Mental health, for those who have suffered like me for many years, is a priority. This message is to tell you to have the courage to live everything to the fullest, even the bad, and not to think that your pain is condemnation.”
Mental health, a widespread problem
The issue of mental disorders among young people is a real emergency: according to the data from the Onda foundationare 16% of the global burden of disease in the 10-19 age group, with anxiety and depression accounting for 40% of all diagnoses. It is not uncommon for the most followed celebs and female personalities from the world of entertainment, sport and social media to promote greater awareness, also and above all through their stories and their sudden exits from the scene.
The Japanese tennis champion Naomi Osaka, former world number 1 and champion of the Black Lives Matters movement, has just returned to the courts of the 2024 Australian Open after a break due to the birth of her daughter Stai. In 2021 she abandoned the French Open and skipped the press conference, to the disdain of the organizers who even fined her, admitting that he had suffered «from long depressive episodes. Everyone who knows me knows that I’m an introvert, and everyone who has seen me in tournaments has realized that yesI often wear headphones because this helps me ease my social anxiety».
Like Naomi Osaka, also the record-breaking American gymnast Simone Biles (at 26 she won 5 world titles and 25 medals) was in the news for suddenly saying goodbye to the limelight, at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics. “I can’t do this”, she murmurs to her coach in front of an exercise (the “yurchenko”) that no woman except her performs in the world. The athlete suffers from disorientation when jumping, but it is a physical condition that hides more serious mental health problems, which Simone wants to cure and which forces her to retire. She will say that she was abused by the national team doctor, that she endured pain and the pressure of an entire country. After 4 years, last October she returned to twirling at the Antwerp World Championshipshappy wife of a football player, light without her demons anymore, picking up where she left off: the Yurchenko double pike which is already history.
October 13, 2019 Simone Biles at the world gymnastics championships in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart (Photo: Marijan Murat/dpa (Photo by Marijan Murat/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Not just Mew, many stars in difficulty
If the Sports pressure affects 35% of sports athletes (data from the Athletes for Hope association), even the world of entertainment is not much better: the last to have admitted to having entered a black vortex was the showgirl Belen Rodriguez, hospitalized in a clinic in Padua for 20 days for cure a very strong depression: “I was just beautiful, but then even the beauty fades” she declared. Belen was afraid of dying, that he was no longer able to eat and gain weight, and in a moment of clarity he asked for help. “It was the worst year of my life” she said to Mara Venier, who hosted her at Sunday in after his departure from the spotlight, to speak the importance of taking care of your mental health.
The same mission that leads many young stars today to use social media, instead of TV, to show themselves authentic and – at the same time – invite you to shed light on your own fragilities without shame. As the actress Matilda De Angelis did, posting a selfie about her problems with acne, anxiety, people pleasing (the desire to please others); the top Bella Hadid, who did not hide the most painful phases of Lyme disease from her fans from which he suffers; colleague Cara Delevigne, ended up in rehab to detox from alcohol and drugs after seeing herself immortalized in the tabloids in an altered state.
Even the singer Levante made no secret of having suffered from postpartum depression after the birth of his Alma Futura. And how can we not mention her, the pop star Britney Spears. The image of her shaving her head in front of the mirror in 2007 remained the emblem of a life altered by early celebrity, addictions, conservatorship, which the singer recounted in her biography The woman in me.
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