One of the themes we’ve returned to on this blog a few times is how “having it all” doesn’t necessarily equal “being happy.” Noisey by Vice is doing a series on music and mental health, and their recent piece on the life and suicide of UK teen star Lil’ Chris caught our eye. The ideas in this article are all too familiar: a young person is thrust into the public eye with no training, and adolescent his highs and lows unfold on an international stage. Match that with depression and anxiety, and overcoming anything can feel impossible. We invite you to read the excerpt from Noisey’s article below, and to click the link provided for the full article. And if you’re in the greater Cleveland area and struggling with anxiety and/or depression, we hope you’ll reach out.
…Although (his) family believes they did everything in their power to help Chris, his fame meant that it was difficult to avoid interference from outsiders who simply didn’t grasp the gravity of his situation. All it takes, (his sister,) Hannah says, is one person to say, publish or do something – whether or not it has any malicious intent – and it can set someone who suffers from mental illness back to square one. When you’re famous, the power of having the most supportive family and friends in the world is reduced when you’re open to scrutiny at all times and have little choice about whether you are publicly discussed in a positive or negative light.
But perhaps the main cruelty of experiencing stardom at a young age is how unprepared you are for when a once hugely promising career falters. Lil’ Chris never matched the success of his first single, and after a few albums he spent the next few years working odd jobs both in and out of the world of performing, even spending a brief time as a door-to-door salesman. At the age of 20, he was cast in the production of Loserville: The Musical, which initially ran in Leeds before transferring to the West End. But for much of the show’s London run his role was played by an understudy, for reasons that, in retrospect, are now a lot more clear. It was around this time, his family says, that his mental health really started to decline. Hannah had spent a year and a half living in Australia and during that period she could tell from conversations with Chris and their parents that things were getting worse. When Hannah came back to the UK she moved in with Chris in London, a period she describes as “heartbreaking.”
“It was like he was being taken over by these mental health issues, by his anxiety, and by his depression, and that’s a really hard thing to see. There’s nothing you can do about it. You try and you try, everyone tries and then you worry that you’re trying too hard and you’re saying the wrong thing, and then you don’t say anything, and then you’re worried about that. How many times I’ve sat and gone through things I said and thought: ‘Oh god, I should have said that or I should have said this.’ It’s awful; it’s so hard.”