Bruce Springsteen opens up about mental illness in Born to Run autobiography

Following 7 years of writing Bruce Springsteen has released his autobiography Born to Run, in which the singer voices his battle with depression. Lifting the curtain on his demons Springsteen recounts how his father had a mental illness, and didn’t come to realise the gravity of his depression until later in life with him entering a period of major depression in his 60s. “I couldn’t get out of bed,” he writes. “It was like all my notorious energy, something that had been mine to command for most of my life, had been cruelly stolen away. I was a walking husk.”

The singer’s mental history has come as a surprise to his many fans, who typically equate ‘The Boss’ to the paragon of American manhood. However Springsteen’s willingness to show his vulnerabilities and speak about his depression are especially encouraging to others afflicted by mental illness and helpful in breaking down stigma. Springsteen is the repudiation of the typical depressed ’27 club’ rockstar, he lives a stable life with his wife and three children, exercises regularly, and reportedly never took drugs showing that depression can affect even the most grounded of us. “My issues weren’t as obvious as drugs,” Springsteen explained to Remnick of the New Yorker “They were quieter – just as problematic, but quieter.”

He credits psychotherapy and medication with bringing him some calm and stability during bouts of depression which he disclosed to Sunday Times journalist Nick Rufford:

“Depression will steal your life. It will; take it right out from underneath you by the things you do. You’re under its sway. So psychopharmacology, for me and my father, was very, very hopeful. Would I have been able to hold things together [otherwise]? I don’t know. Without it, it’s much easier for things to come apart. So I kinda got to it at the right time. it reestablished my chemistry and personality and gave me my life back, which was slipping away between my fingers due to the fact that i couldn’t control my anxieties and my neurosis.”