Question:
Can anyone tell me where to find a list of famous people (current and
historical) who have suffered from panic/anxiety?
This would be of great service to me.
Answer:
ANXIOUS FAMOUS PEOPLE
Here's a list of famous people who visitors have reported as suffering at one
time or another from an anxiety disorder
Carly Simon (singer), Aretha Franklin (singer), Lani O'Grady (actress),
Michael English (singer),
Sir Laurence Olivier (actor),
Earl Campbell (football),
Al Kasha (songwriter),
Emily Dickinson (poet),
Marty Ingels (comedian), Nicholas Cage (actor), Roseanne Barr (comedian),
Michael Jackson (singer),
Naomi Judd (singer), Susan Powter (tv host), John Madden (announcer),
Leila Kenzle (actress),
Sissy Spacek (actress), Willard Scott (weatherman), Johnny Depp (actor),
Sally Field (actress),
Shecky Greene (comedian), Alanis Morisette (singer), Burt Reynolds (actor),
Kim Basinger (actress),
Olivia Hussey (actress) Oprah Winfrey (host), Tom Snyder (host),
John Candy (comedian),
Sam Shepard (playwright), Isaac Asimov (author), Charles Schultz
(cartoonist),
Dean Cain (actor), Barbra Streisand (singer), Anne Tyler (author), James
Garner (actor), Jim Eisenreich (baseball),
Pete Harnisch (baseball), Courtney Love (singer), Naomi Campbell (model),
David Bowie (singer), Nikola Tesla (inventor), Charlotte Bronte (author),
Alfred Lord Tennyson (poet), Sigmund Freud (psychiatrist), John Steinbeck
(author), W.B. Yeats (poet), Sir Isaac Newton (scientist), Abraham Lincoln
(president), Barbara Gordon (filmmaker), Robert Burns (poet), Edvard Munch
(artist), John Stuart Mill (philosopher),
Charles Darwin might never have revolutionized biology with his theory of
evolution if he had not suffered from chronic mental illness that turned him
into a scholarly recluse, a provocative new study concludes.
Before he was out of his twenties, Darwin succumbed to a mysterious,
debilitating condition that various authorities attributed over the years to
bad nerves, tropical disease, arsenic poisoning, intellectual
exhaustion, dyspepsia, "suppressed gout" or other complaints.
That condition, two physicians argue in this week's issue of the "Journal
of the Amrican Medical Association," was most likely a form of panic disorder
aggravated by agoraphobia.
The combination kept the celebrated naturalist removed from society and
probably forced him to focus on the epochal concept of natural selection,
according to Thomas Barloon and Russell Noyes of the University of Iowa
College of Medicine.
"Had it not been for this illness," they write, "his theory of evolution
might not have become the all-consuming passion that produced "On the
Origin of Species."
Panic disorder, which affects an estimated 13 million Americans, manifests
itself in unexpected attacks of extreme anxiety, with symptoms including
rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, trembling, sweating, nausea and
dizziness.
Some victims feel they are losing their minds or are about to die. Many become
so obsessively worried about subsequent attacks that they make major changes in
their behaviours, shunning whatever situation may have prompted the panic.
You can add Jim Carrey to the list. There are far more of us out there than
people think.
I don't know if this one was mentioned before, but Andy Partridge of the
British band XTC ("Peter Pumpkinhead") would suffer panic attacks onstage,
and that's why they stopped touring. He still won't tour, although he
doesn't specifically say why.
