Gary Coleman’s Death Highlights Epidemic of Child Star Depression

Gary Coleman’s death last week ended a life that must have looked enviable when he was a child star making $70,000 per episode on a popular sit com.  By the time he was an adult, though, Coleman—like many other child actors—was struggling with depression.

On the Geraldo show in 1993, Coleman admitted to having made multiple suicide attempts.  Along the way, he had sued his parents for money that was missing from his trust fund, and later was forced to declare bankruptcy.

Early fame can’t necessarily be blamed for Coleman’s rocky years; the medical condition that stopped his growth prematurely and caused him to need dialysis and kidney transplants was surely a cause of stress, and the struggles with his parents certainly don’t happen in every child star’s family.

With Coleman’s death, however, we’re reminded that all three of the children on the relentlessly happy 1980s sitcom Diff’rent Strokes have struggled with mental health issues.  Dana Plato, who played the daughter of the businessman who adopted Coleman’s character, struggled with drug abuse and died of an overdose in 1999 at the age of 34.  Plato’s son committed suicide just last month, 11 years after his mother’s death.

Todd Bridges, who played Coleman’s older brother, struggled with cocaine addiction in the 1980s and has had a number of serious brushes with the law.  Bridges has written about that struggle, and about the stresses of childhood stardom, in a new book, Killing Willis, which came out in March of this year.

Bridges’ story offers a more hopeful ending than Coleman’s or Plato’s—he’s clean and a working actor in his adulthood—but the rough path followed by these three child stars demonstrates that wealth, success, and fame can’t keep depression or drug abuse away.  The difficulties of the Diff’rent Strokes kids might also make parents think twice about pushing even the most talented kids too far, too fast.