Sinéad O’Connor hinted at having suicidal thoughts while living in a Travelodge.
Sinéad O’Connor hinted at having suicidal thoughts while living in a Travelodge
The ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ singer, who was found dead in London on 26 July aged 56 after moving back to the capital from her native Ireland to work on what turned out to be her final album, opened up about her mental health torment while living in the budget hotel in the US in 2017 months before she appeared on Dr Phil to detail her horrific abuse at the hands of her mum.
In a 12-minute video posted on Facebook she said while weeping: “I’m all by myself. And there’s absolutely nobody in my life except my doctor, my psychiatrist, the sweetest man on Earth, who says I’m his hero, and that’s about the only thing keeping me alive at the moment... and that’s kind of pathetic.
“I am now living in a Travelodge motel in the a**e end of New Jersey.
“I want everyone to know what it’s like – that’s why I’m making this video.
“Mental illness, it’s like drugs, it doesn’t give a s**** who you are, and equally what’s worse, it’s the stigma, it doesn’t give a s*** who you are.”
A year before the Facebook video, she disappeared for more than 36 hours after going on a bike ride in Chicago.
Sinéad went on to tell Dr Phil, 72, she was kept in a “torture chamber” by her mum.
She said on his show about her mother Johanna Marie, who died in 1985 in a car crash aged 45 when Sinéad was 19: “I am fed up of being defined as the crazy person; the childhood abuse survivor.
“She (my mother) ran a torture chamber. She was a person who took delight in hurting you.
“She used to make me say over and over again, ‘I am nothing. I am nothing’ while she was beating me.
“She was not well; she was really very, very, very not well. I would say she was possessed although I’m not sure I believe in such things."
When Dr. Phil asked what she loved most about her mum, the singer replied: “What I love about my mother is that she’s dead.”
Sinéad – whose remains have now been returned to her family, and whose death came 18 months after her son Shane, 17, took his life after he escaped from a hospital while on suicide watch – was also open about her horrific relationship with her mum Johanna Marie in her brutal memoir ‘Rememberings’.
Her Dr Phil chat was 27 years after Sinéad wept for her mum in the ‘Nothing Compares’ promo.
She said while filming the music video she couldn’t stop thinking about her mum as she walked around during its shoot, adding: “I didn’t know I was going to cry singing it. “Every time I sing the song, I think of my mother.
“I never stopped crying for her.”
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