Actor Catherine Zeta-Jones said in April 2011 that she’d been diagnosed with bipolar II. The condition involves depressive and hypomanic episodes, with hypomania less severe than the mania of bipolar I.
“Finding out that it was called something was the best thing that ever happened to me!” — Catherine Zeta-Jones
After her husband Michael Douglas’s cancer diagnosis, she struggled with sleep, worry and stress. In a July 21, 2013 Telegraph interview, she called these “a classic trigger” and said she’d been dealing with bipolar for a long time. Her April 2011 disclosure had described a recent diagnosis.
Explaining the relief of having professional help, she told Good Housekeeping, in remarks published by HuffPost UK on February 2, 2016: “The fact that there was a name for my emotions and that a professional could talk me through my symptoms was very liberating.”
Douglas said on The View, in remarks published May 10, 2011, “I’m really proud of her.” Zeta-Jones sought inpatient care in April 2011 and again in April 2013; her representative described the latter stay as proactive care. In the Good Housekeeping interview reported in 2016, she said she was “in a very good place.”
In her statement published by People on April 20, 2011, Zeta-Jones said: “There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.”