Mindy McCready dies in apparent suicide

The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.

Mindy McCready dies in apparent suicide (LINK)

HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) — Perhaps there was one heartbreak too many for Mindy McCready.

The former country star apparently took her own life on Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities say McCready died of a suspected self-inflicted gunshot to the head and an autopsy is planned. She was 37, and left behind two young sons.

McCready had attempted Suicide at least three times since 2005, as she struggled to cope amid a series of tumultuous public events that marked much of her adult life.

“It is a giant whirlwind of chaos all the time,” she said of her life. “I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It’s just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that’s really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality.”

Read the Rest of the Article at Daily Caller

My Take…

It’s sad, no doubt. I had “featured” Mindy McCeady as possibly having BPD in two posts on this website (Mindy McCready and BPD and Mindy McCready and the BPD-o-Meter) during the last few years. I take no joy in seeing someone kill themselves, either by suicide or by substance abuse. I mentioned Mindy McCready in my extensive post, Celebrities with Borderline Personality Disorder (possibly, not for sure). What’s sad about that particular post is that, although it’s been updated a few times, I wrote it in January of 2008, more than five years ago. In the intervening years, at least two of the names on that post, McCready (although not in the “top five”) and Amy Winehouse, are now dead. Others, like Lindsay Lohan and Courtney Love, have had numerous drug and legal problems. While none of these individuals have come out publicly as suffering from borderline personality disorder, the list alone is a sad testament to emotional pain and struggle. Just being a celebrity doesn’t seem to make one immune from the deep pain involved in BPD or other mental issues/substance issues. We have all seen people in the public eye struggle with substances, yet I feel that there is something deeper and more primal at work, deep emotional agony. That agony is a hallmark of BPD.

I think it’s time for my readers to understand that this kind of pain, the pain associated with BPD, is lethal. It’s a life and death issue. The suicide rate for people with borderline personality disorder is 400 times the U.S. national average. Over 75% of people with BPD (based on a poll from this website) have attempted suicide at least once in their lives. This disorder is progressive, powerful and fatal. Who is to say the number of people whose death certificate doesn’t read “suicide” that are victims of this deep emotional pain and seek to squelch it through the use of chemicals or impulsive/risky behavior?

I’ve read a number of articles about Mindy McCready in the last few days. I was not a fan of hers. I did have a deep sympathy for her pain though. In the article referenced above, she says: “I call my life a beautiful mess and organized chaos. It’s just always been like that. My entire life things have been attracted to me and vice versa that turn into chaotic nightmares or I create the chaos myself. I think that’s really the life of a celebrity, of a big, huge, giant personality.” Perhaps it was not so much the “life of a celebrity” as the life of someone doing anything to stop the pain.

In an interview with her ex-boyfriend, Billy McKnight, he states: “Perhaps staying in there and grieving around people that could help her over the death of her fiancé could’ve calmed her down, but the demons that she hasn’t beaten were there, and until she was going to face them, something was going to happen and everyone who knows her personally knew that. She would’ve had to probably stay in somewhere quite a long time until she really healed and started looking into herself for getting better.” Clearly, he believed she had struggle with “demons” for some time.

She says in another interview: “It was hurting so bad and then they just did what they could to make it hurt even more. My life hasn’t really ever made sense to me because I do know what kind of person I am, and I do know that I try to be as good a person as I can possibly be every day.”

I would like for the people who read this, who are friends and loved ones of people with BPD or people with BPD themselves, to get help, to show compassion, to understand this life completely, before the disorder and the pain gets the best of the person who “[tries] to be as good a person as [they] can possibly be”. The pain can seem insurmountable. It is important for loved ones to understand that this disorder can be fatal.

To Read the Interview with Billy McKnight

To Read a History of Mindy McCready’s Struggles (and what lead me to include her in this site)