Marina and the Diamonds

In 2015, Marina Diamandis, known as Marina and the Diamonds, stated in Twitter Q&A response to a fan asking about her experiences with anxiety and depression, “I have suffered from both for long periods of time. I would recommend getting help with counseling to see what the root of your problem is.”

Marina herself has never been one to shy away from talking about her own struggles with mental illness with bold, popular lyrics such as “feeling super, super, super suicidal” (Teen Idle), “It’s my problem if I have no friends and feel I want to die (Are you Satisfied?), or “I’m sad to the core / everyday is a chore” (Primadonna). In an interview, Marina stated in regard to her own depression, “I just wanted to divorce myself...I was so tired. I’m either on top of the world or I just think everything has gone down the tubes. It’s so easy to pick on bad things because you’re so nervous about it working out--you want it so badly.” In the Twitter Q&A, when asked how she overcame her own struggles with depression, Marina responded, “It was a guy on the news and he said, ‘I’d always wanted to be happy my whole life and so I chose to be.’ And that seemed so simple but it was very profound for me, that you decide to be happy, it doesn’t just happen to you.” While maybe not everyone feels as though they can simply choose happiness, Marina does highlight the importance of agency in recovering from any life set back or illness.

In 2015, Marina Diamandis, known as Marina and the Diamonds, decided to take a break from her music career. During a fan chat she stated that she was not running towards the idea of making another album soon because she felt “understood as a person and an artist” with her last album, FROOT. Further she stated, “There’s not that same hunger and ambition. There’s a different kind of hunger for other things.” While she’s taking a break from her music career, she’s still using her spotlight to speak up actively about mental health on other platforms. With her new blog, marinabook, Marina even admits to her own fascination with the subject of psychology and that she is now taking a psych class. In her recent post, “There’s Nothing Wrong With You” she emphasizes being weary of taking thoughts as truths, and asserts that meditation, exercise, and identifying with thoughts are three tools she’s used to combat depression. In anticipation of protest to these tools she states, “if you’re bottom of the barrel depressed, you have nothing to lose.” She eloquently ends her blog post, by stating, “Before writing my last album, I honestly thought that I had just been born unhappy and that depression was a permanent part of me. I don’t believe that anymore. When I was writing ‘FROOT’ I felt like I was kissing goodbye to a big chapter of my life. That portion of my youth was heart-splitting and lonely at times, but it was also dazzling and beautiful. And that’s how life is for a lot of us. If only I’d known all those years that it was just part of being human.”