Michael Angelakos – the ringleader of famous indietronica band Passion Pit – was diagnosed with bipolar disorder when he was 17. He rejected any romanticized notions of the ‘bipolar artist label’ and instead has committed himself to mental health advocacy and awareness.
Since revealing his mental illness to the public in 2012, he’s been an open book about how it’s affected his life – he even live-streamed a video of himself going through Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) treatment, a new and cutting edge non-drug depression treatment that sends magnetic pulses to certain parts of the brain (although he pulled it down shortly after since the treatment hadn’t yet been approved by the FDA.)
“The whole point is like, everyone says, ‘Oh, I don’t want to show people what I do, I don’t want to talk about therapy.’ If we don’t talk about it, it’s quite literally why no one understands what we’re talking about,” Angelakos says in the video. “So, I don’t have anything to hide. I think this is an amazing treatment.”
All proceeds from Passion Pit’s new album Tremendous Sea of Love (released July 27th) will be given to the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at Broad Institute.
This album – written during a manic episode – is dedicated to those who struggle with mental illnesses along with supporters and researchers in the field.
#seaoflove pic.twitter.com/34eExIoxJT
— #weneedscience (@passionpit) March 24, 2017
“The people that are the most vulnerable are perceived as scary and untrustworthy, and the people that generate the most content need to be controlled,” he told Billboard. He brings the humanness (and spelling errors) back into the big music industry and social media.
This is one initiative of many that his new company, Wishart Group, is taking on. Wishart Group provides legal, educational, and healthcare support to musicians, functioning primarily as a mental health program (he has repeatedly said that if it wasn’t for music, he’d likely be dead.) They raised more than $250 million earlier this year and, thanks to the release of this new album, we expect only more good to come.
Angelakos reduces the stigma by embracing his reality and inviting everyone to try to understand a little about what it’s like. Go, have a listen for yourself.
If you’re down for ridding the stigma surrounding mental health, you absolutely should take a look at The Mighty – an online publication that faces “disability, disease and mental illness together.”
