Understanding Bipolar Disorder

Shortly after her mother died when she was 17, Sinéad left her abusive home and moved to England to begin her music career. "I started making records and suddenly became this pop star thing, but I never had time to form my own identity, if you like, or recover from my upbringing," she says. "It really confused me. I didn't know who I was or what I was. And I didn't have anybody around me who I knew before, so you're not seeing yourself reflected back at yourself from anyone around you. It can be a massive identity crisis."

Sinéad says even as she struggled to deal with her abusive upbringing and her fame, the music remained an outlet. "In Ireland, we're still quite behind in terms of recovery and therapy and all that kind of stuff," she says. "So when I was growing up there was no such thing as talking to anyone about abuse and what you've been through—there was no such thing as therapy and no such thing as recovery, basically. So for me, music was where I kind of put everything."