S Poddar
Celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal has expressed concerns over watching The Bear, the popular TV drama series that dramatizes the intense world of restaurants, fearing it may trigger his bipolar. Diagnosed with bipolar earlier this year, Blumenthal revealed the high-pressure scenes portrayed in the show could pose a serious mental health risk to him, given his long history in similarly stressful environments.
Blumenthal is 58 years old. He is known for restaurants like the three Michelin stars’ The Fat Duck, two Michelin star’s Dinner by Heston Blumenthal and one Michelin star’d Hind’s Head, among others. He pays attention to the sorts of media he consumes because of the impact they could have on his mental wellbeing. He told BBC Newsnight that while some of his closest friends, who are respected peers in the culinary world, have consulted on The Bear, as far as the question of authenticity is concerned, he finds it “too soon” to join the show. “I hope I will one day be able to watch it, but at the moment, it’s too soon,” he said.
Melanie Ceysson, Blumenthal’s wife, observed that The Bear might be particularly relevant for him because “I think it is the biggest trigger for Heston’s condition.” More recently, Blumenthal was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, a psychiatric illness characterized by severe mood swings, from episodes of intense energy and mania to deep depression. One of the more well-known charities, Bipolar UK, estimates that some 1.3 million people in the UK are living with the disorder, but most go undiagnosed.
Last October, Blumenthal experienced a severe mental health episode that led to his hospitalization. At one point he slipped into mania, couldn’t sleep for days, was hallucinating, and actually thought about killing himself. He was eventually diagnosed with bipolar type 1, a subtype of the condition in which mania often overshadows depressive episodes, and these can be short-lived. Now on medication, he has stabilized his mood, though he remains reflective on the toll his early career demands took on his well-being.
Reviewing his younger years, Blumenthal conceded how this brutal schedule may have hidden or worsened the condition. He noted, “I was working 120 hours a week for the first 10 years; sometimes, I only slept 20 hours a week.”. “The restaurant was young, and I was getting up at five o’clock in the morning, going into the kitchen, and then leaving at midnight,” he said. It was a brutal schedule, but he says he didn’t know he was experiencing symptoms of bipolar disorder at the time-thinking it was just the stress of opening a new restaurant.
Blumenthal believes that his diagnosis is not “all doom and gloom”; it is an integral part of who he is. He has spoken about his experiences with his mental health in an effort to keep open and broad-minded conversation open and break the stigma with which mental health disorders have been associated, especially in high-pressure fields such as culinary arts. By sharing his story, Blumenthal aims to raise awareness and empathy towards mental health treatment for everyone in high-stress professions.
