My husband made me aware of a video depicting Maia Campbell acting really, really crazy. I had heard about her being bipolar but after viewing that video, I now believe she might actually be a schizophrenic. I cannot get down on her because she is very, very mentally ill. Link
What I find heart breaking is the fact that looking at the video, she clearly has fallen into the hands of some scary characters who are beating and prostituting her. It is heart breaking to watch.
Her mother is no longer alive. Her late mother is Bebe Moore Campbell who was a writer who appeared in Essence magazine for many years.
Her last book is titled, Seventy Two Hour Hold and here is its description:
“Seventy Two Hour Hold is the story of Keri, a woman caught up in a love triangle between her ex-husband and her actor boyfriend. Her world is shattered when her beloved child develops a mental illness. Unable to get the help she needs from the mental health system, Keri joins forces with the volatile Bethany, whose daughter is also unstable. Fed up, the two take to the road in search of the healing for their children promised by a band of radical underground mental health workers. Their arduous journey tries their souls in every way imaginable but ultimately leads both women to a greater understanding of what it means to love unconditional.”
Her mother would be devastated to see her daughter in such a dire condition. My guess is that her father and step father and ex husband are not helping her because they are practicing “tough love”. Sorry, but there are times when intervention is necessary because tough love does not work with the mentally ill. They have a brain disorder. Her brain disorder is made worse by the fact that she refuses to take her meds and she is self medicating with hard drugs.
Before her death, Bebe said this about her daughter:
Watching my loved one become violent and an incoherent stranger certainly tested my faith. My very close family member has bipolar disorder, which is a mood disorder – a disease of the brain.
We were at a hotel together and my loved one flew into a rage. The next thing I knew, all of my suitcases were outside the hotel door. In my mind came the words “She’s sick, she’s sick.” It just kept echoing. I recognized that this was indeed a mental illness and I had absolutely no control over it, that I would have to let go or I would be destroyed.I didn’t know what was wrong, but throwing me out of the hotel room really crystallized that this was indeed a mental problem. When I began to see the early manifestations of early bipolar disorder, I went into denial. I told myself, “This is something she will outgrow. This is a phase, etc.”
But once I recognized that this was a sickness, being in denial, I didn’t talk about it outside of the family and I forbid anyone else talking about it. This is our secret.
GO HERE to read the remainder of that article
Mental illness is often not dealt with or discussed in the black community but insanity is no joke. It cannot be swept under a rug.
Below is the video of Maia acting the way drug addicted insane people are expected to behave. It’s indeed prayer time because her mother is not here to do so on her behalf: [LANGUAGE WARNING]

American Idol
Tiger Woods
It has been so sad to watch this woman who had such a great career ahead of her now sink to this level. There was previously another video which showed her taking drugs, rambling and offering to have sex with the men who videotaped her. It’s sad that some people get kicks out of exploiting her condition. I do pray she gets help and is healed and made whole through Jesus Christ.
That poor girl is on the internet nude with legs spread open. She is sooooooo in need of help. This is a tragedy.
yes, sad…I remember this beautiful young lady from her show on tv and then even remember her when she was in her right mind, she was a Christian, talking about the Lord and making sure she didn’t have negative people in her and life and made a lot of sense…so when I heard this a few years ago, I was really shocked and I also think that her mom dying also took her way over the top.
This is not funny. My mother was displaying irrational behavior throughout my childhood. Relatives said she was just too smart, eccentric. When I was 14 she had a full psychotic break, losing her job,our home. She wasn’t diagnosed until I was 19 yo. When I tried to tell my relatives that something was wrong with my mom, they ignored me. I am hoping that Maia has no children to go through this. I’ve been on my own since I was 15. I grew up afraid that I would one day lose my mind. My relatives let my sister and I fend for ourselves. My dad was not there for us. Thank God, my mother in her well years had purchased and paid for a mobile home. Thats where my sister and I lived, on my grandparents property, no electricity or running water. There were days we had no food. I finished raising my younger sister, by working on my familys farm. My mom just left us one day, on another one of her rovings. So I really find nothing funny about those who are exploiting instead of helping this young woman. May God bless her and send her the help she needs. She needs to be hospitalized and put on medication. Her father and step-father have probably come to the end of their rope. I almost did a few times with my mother. But, there fot the grace of God go I. I always remembered that .
Southern Val, your story is exceptionally heart breaking.
How old were you when your mother left? Was there no foster care that the state could put you in?
How is your sister doing now?
Most important, where is your mother and is she better?
Sadly, Maia has one, maybe two children. My guess is that their father or fathers have them. She was once married.
I didnt find this video sad, I found it truely and utterly disgusting…I dont understand how people can take care of the mentally disadvantaged.
Lynn, my Mom passed away in 1998. She had finally gotten professional help and was on medication. She moved into a really nice housing development in Charleston. She still had persecution issues… a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia, but with the medication she was more and more becoming the Mom I remembered as a young girl. She died from heart disease. My sister went on to college and so did I. But we both suffered from the effects of our troubled childhood. I don’t have much of a relationship with some family members because I feel they could have stepped in and taken charge of us when we needed them most. We both have had issues of bonding with others, self-esteem and taking on responsibility. I was diagnosed with bipolar, and I know it might sound like denial, but I am not bipolar. I used drugs and alcohol to numb the pain I still carried with me, this resulted in bouts of deep depression when I would come off of a high, mimicking mental illness.I hated God for allowing the disintergration of our family. Hate and anger can manifest itself in many forms. Let me tell you this , I serve an AWESOME GOD. When I realized that my life was not painful because of God, I surrendered to Him. I have not had any issues since. Of course I have days when I am blue, but so does everyone. I’m saying all this to say that with the proper professional help and friends and family who truly have her best interest at heart, Maia can be helped. God will put the right individuals in her path to help her. I pray that her children are in a loving and supportive home. This will have an impact on their lives without a stable environment.
Thanks for sharing your testimony, Val.
It’s wonderful that both you and your sister persevered in spite of!
Well, I find it difficult that this girl still has family members left in the world, her father is still alive and here she is on the Internet. A person who had a career and a life ahead of her. I have seen this woman in countless music videos and on TV in a program with LL cool J, and in various hair magazines from back in the day.
I was looking up her father’s number to call him and then I came to my senses. The man does not know me to get a call from me.
I used to live opposite a girl with a similar condition. On one occasion we nearly came to blows. I was in the kitchen and she walks in and I said hello to her, sometimes she would say hello, somtimes she would ignore me. On this occasion she walked up to me and put her head in my face and started to accuse me of not saying hello. I told her to move away from me, of course she continued to say thing to try to provoke me, so I just carried on cleaning my chicken and ignored her. She got mad that I was ignoring her. On another occasion, I heard her screaming in her room at the top of her voice at 4am in the morning. I had to be up and out early and this girl was always doing crazy things to keep me up at night. I thought something was happening to her in the room. Turns out she was having one of her episodes. This girl looked normal and you would never know she was mentally unwell.
There are a number of scenarios that we had and one day I had to really cuss her out and make a formal report about her. She used to play her music loud all night and always refused to open the door when I asked her to turn it down. She was constantly changing from one person to the next and always had a different boyfriend each week coming to stay with her, these guys would disturb me and were always hanging around.
One day we had a big row and her latest boyfriend tried to stab me with a fork, I told him not to be stupid. About a week later she was having a massive row with the same guy and threw him out, now she was trying to get me to intervene and tell him to leave. How did this have anything to do with me, I wondered.
I encouraged this girl to try to occupy herself with a job and she told me she had started studying. Sometimes, mentally ill people need something to focus on and I hate to say it, they need medication.
This girl who was pretty, slim, stylish etc had mental issues due to many years of drug abuse. I later found out that this girl who lived opposite me had been a drug abuser for many years, smoking weed everyday and living life on the edge. I was about 5 years older than this girl, I never saw her family come to visit her. Fortunately, in the UK, once you are diagnosed with mental problems, there is help available on the NHS and you don’t have to pay for it.
Try to avoid confrontation with such people, MOS and I’ll tell you why. They have abnormal strength, especially when they are in the manic phase so you could end up getting hurt. Call the police on such people.
Lynn,
Yes, you are right. They do have abnormal strength. I know a guy who threw his sister down the stairs and there was no previous mental issues in his family. I learned that this guy had been a drug abuser for years, again he used to drink and smoke weed all the time. When he had a violent episode like this, the parents called the Police and he was bundled away to a mental home for some months until he was well enough to come out. The problem is a lot of the time they will mix their medication with alcohol.
Again, in the UK, mentally ill people would be put into a home.
Actually, I let the people who owned the house know that this girl living opposite me had mental issues. They were not aware of it. Once I told them what she had been doing, they made arrangements to get her own place. A few months later she had her own flat. She wasn’t a bad person. In fact, with the right care and attention, these people can get to live quite normally.
Also, there are different types of mental issues, I think she had manic depression/bipolar disorder. One day she was gentle, normal and fine and you could have a normal conversation with her, the next she was aggressive, argumentative and trying to pick a fight.
In the case of Maia Campbell, I think her family need to step in. But I find that with western society everybody is too busy living their own lives to care about family. If not, this girl would have proper care. Don’t they know that this affects their family name as well?
Someone should step, I have this same disorder in my family and with each person, an intervention was done…Eventually they do get it…Like everything else, it takes time…It is gonna take a common person to save her, (non-celebrity status)…Yes, she has to want to do it, but someone needs to help her get to that point in order for her to see things a little clearer…Yes she needs prayer, Please Lord save her, nothings impossible with you, let her be inspiration to others in her situation…Thank you (tearing)
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