Yannick Noah, who suffered a heavy depression in the wake of his victory at Roland-Garros in 1983, is part of a dozen celebrities interviewed in this film, which will be broadcast on May 6 on M6. We meet athletes there, like swimmers Camille Lacourt and Florent Manaudou, actors, like actress Michèle Bernier, or musicians like the singer apple. Other patients testify, without being known to the general public.
The majority of them have experienced depressive episodes or bipolar disorders. Among the pathologies are also anxious disorders, eating disorders (TCA), or schizophrenic disorders as in actor François Berléand who says “in a permanent fiction”.
Fight against “stigma”
Themes come up regularly in these testimonies, such as the gap between mental reality and the image given to the public, while mental disorders can paradoxically have served as an engine. “I wanted to be known because I wanted to be loved because I hated myself,” recalls the magician Eric Antoine. “Which makes me the happiest […] It’s just a dressing. »»
-The broadcast of this film comes in a context where the fight against “stigmatization” is increasingly presented as essential to help people with mental disorders.
Other personalities have already spoken of their pathologies in public as, at the end of March, the presenter of the first morning radio station in France, Nicolas Demorand, suffering from bipolar disorder.
These public speeches are praised by specialists in mental illnesses, who consider them important to change the gaze of society, even if some warn that they cannot resolve difficult access to psychiatric care in the face of the glaring lack of means in the sector.
