ACTRESS CATHERINE Zeta-Jones has confirmed that she checked into a clinic earlier this month to get treatment for bipolar II, after supporting her husband while he fought cancer last year.
A spokeswoman for the 41-year-old actress said yesterday that she was treated for five days at the Silver Hill mental health facility in Connecticut, but that she is now “feeling great” and is ready to start work on two films this week.
Her actor husband, Michael Douglas, underwent chemotherapy and radiotherapy after being diagnosed with throat cancer last summer. It was announced in January that he had beaten the disease.
A friend of the actress is reported to have told People magazine and the Mirror: “There’s no question it’s been a stressful year. … Catherine has had to deal with Michael’s illness and that’s been hard.”
Zeta-Jones is now back in New York, spending time with her husband and children Dylan, 10 and seven-year-old Carys.
What is Bipolar II?
People with bipolar II swing from severe depression to a milder and briefer manic state than that suffered by people with the better-known bipolar I.
The change in behaviour is typically less extreme, and bipolar II patients rarely need hospitalisation.
Where they do, it can be because they need time away from a stressful situation, or to allow their medication to be tweaked.
Bipolar disorder has been linked to creativity. The Los Angeles Times reports that Tchaikovsky, Van Gogh and Hemingway all suffered from it, and first chair violinists are more likely to have been treated for it than any other illness.
