General Hospital Actor Opens Up About His Mental Illness
To fans of the Port Charles-set daytime drama, General Hospital,Maurice Benard has been the dark, unpredictable and often brooding or pensive mob boss, Michael "Sonny" Corinthos. Far from being a real-life leader of the underworld, Benard has struggled with something that his onscreen character suffers from.
Faithful followers of the soap and its star are likely already aware of Benard's long bout with bipolar disorder. Also known as manic depression, bipolar disorder is a mental illness characterized by periods or episodes of unusually exuberant behavior or elevated moods referred to as mania in clinical terms. Benard has had to live with the condition Health America.
"I was 21 going on 22 when I first [got diagnosed]," the General Hospital star has revealed. "Bipolar is a mood disorder. The highs are high and lows for me are unbelievably low. No one in my family knew what was going on. I didn't know what I was going on. So they put me into a hospital. I stayed there for awhile and then got out and diagnosed. And at that time it was called manic depression."
Benard's medical problem eventually got written into the canvas of General Hospital, paving the way for some of the more pivotal storylines and events in the soap. In Sonny's case, his manic depression elicits the occasional streak of inexplicable violence. One incident in particular, had Sonny shooting his then wife, Carly (Laura Wright) in the skull, while she was giving birth to their son, during one of his manic attacks.
"Two years ago the head writer came up to me about doing a breakdown story," Benard recounted. "I said as long as it's done to educate people and to make it right. And we did it. It was fantastic."
