Howie Mandel got candid about the mental anguish he experienced while quarantined with COVID-19.
The "America's Got Talent" ("AGT")judge spoke openly about the topic during an interview with TMZ, saying it felt like he was going "insane" having to spend 10 days alone holed up in a room after contracting the illness earlier this month.
Mandel believes he contracted COVID-19 while attending the Nickelodeon Kids' Choice Awards ceremony in Santa Monica, California, on April 9, as it fitted into the timeframe and many people at the event were unmasked. Mandel and his fellow "AGT" judges ended up winning an award at the ceremony, but Mandel said he would rather have been "slimed."
"But I was, with a virus, apparently,” he said, adding that although they won, it felt like he had "lost" by getting sick.
"I'm vaxxed, and I'm boosted, so my symptoms weren't terrible," he said. "But knowing me ... I would have rather taken the mental pain of me being locked in a room for 10 days, not going near anybody.
"I went insane," he added. "I still feel like I'm recovering from that, the insanity. And I'm not joking. I got incredibly depressed, incredibly neurotic."
Mandel said that his only "panacea" to his physical and mental health was being able to distract himself but that is difficult to spend 10 days "alone in a room." Speaking out, he continued, was his way of trying to decrease mental health stigma.
"I'm in therapy, and I take medication and I do things. But for years and years, there was a stigma — and I think there still is — a stigma attached to mental health," he said, noting that it was "healing to talk about it."
"It's just good to be out of the room!" he said.
Mandel has been open about his mental health, previously delving into what it was like to live with obsessive-compulsive disorder.
"I try to anchor myself. I have a beautiful family, and I love what I do. But at the same time, I can fall into a dark depression I can't get out of," he told People in 2021. He admitted that the pandemic was a massive trigger for him.
"There isn't a waking moment of my life when 'we could die' doesn't come into my psyche," he said. "But the solace I would get would be the fact that everybody around me was OK. It's good to latch onto OK. But [during the pandemic] the whole world was not OK. And it was absolute hell."
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Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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