Catherine Zeta-Jones Being Treated for Bipolar II Disorder

After supporting her husband Michael Douglas who battled throat cancer last year, Catherine Zeta-Jones, 41, recently checked herself in to a mental health facility, reportedly the Silver Hill Hospital in Connecticut on April 6, to treat a bipolar II disorder.

“People with bipolar II disorder experience high and low mood swings, but the highs are never fully manic episodes,” writes Huffpost Health.  Basically, bipolar II is less severe as bipolar I.

Depression is a primary sign as well as agitation mixed with seeming to be very upbeat, per Gabrielle Carlson, M.D. of the New York Stony Brook University Medical Center.

Entertainment Tonight lists some signs that may have signaled such a diagnosis.  ET reports that last June Zeta-Jones was played off stage with music after she gave a excited, kind of “rambling” acceptance speech at the Radio City Music Hall for her Tony Award and in October she had a melt down in front of the surrounding press at the JFK airport.

David J. Miklowitz, PhD, author of “The Bipolar Disorder Survival Guide: What You and Your Family Need to Know,” says that , “it’s now known that stress can trigger episodes of depression for bipolar sufferers. He said medicine and psychotherapy has helped sufferers and their families identify triggers and recognize episodes and also how to help the depression or mood swings become less severe. Often, more sleep are adjusted medicines is all it takes.”

Zeta-Jones, Oscar winner and mother of two, had reportedly been coping with her stressful last year with sleepless nights, chain-smoking and drinking. Not only was the Zeta-Jones-Douglas couple defeating a life-threatening disease in 2010, they were also reportedly dealing with Douglas’ former wife of 23 years, Diandra Douglas, who is seeking half of Douglas’s earnings from his Academy Award winning role for Best Actor, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (1987).

Zeta-Jones’ rep recently released a statement saying, “She’s feeling great and looking forward to starting work this week on her two upcoming films.”

One of those films is rumored to be “Playing the Field”, currently filming in Shreveport, Louisiana, a comedy starring Gerard Butler who plays a youth soccer coach who moves into a new suburb to be closer to his kids, and becomes involved with other women in the neighborhood.

The other film is entitled “Lay the Favorite” where Zeta-Jones is said to play the wife of Bruce Willis’ character, Dink Heimowitz.  The drama-comedy focuses on a group of middle-aged men plotting a way to use the sports books in Las Vegas for mega profit, due out in 2012.

Thank you Entertainer Writer Leslie Kehrer for contributing to this article.