Maurice Benard Reflects On His Necessary Mental Health Break From General Hospital

Rather than invite a guest onto his popular videocast State of Mind this week, Maurice Benard sat before the camera and shared with viewers the struggle that saw him take a two-week break from General Hospital.

Maurice Benard On His Recent Struggles

The Sonny Corinthos actor explained that: “About a month ago, anxiety came knocking. Of course, I couldn’t tell the triggers, and a lot of that is my fault for not going to therapy like I should. Everybody should, and you know it’s just one of those things.

“Plus, I was playing a character on General Hospital that is bipolar and off his medication, but I’m not going to say that was the reason. That may have been a little bit of the reason — the main reason was that I started feeling anxiety, and then my son and my wife went to Europe. They’re the two people who, when I’m going through anything, can talk me out of it or talk me down — so they’re gone — now I’m doing this basically alone, and the anxiety started ramping up.

“At night, I’d wake up in the middle of the night shaking, and then I couldn’t get back to sleep, so basically I was just not sleeping well. I was taking medication, but, eventually, that wasn’t working…

“I knew I had to go to work… and I knew I couldn’t go to work, the way I was feeling.” Thus precipitated a two-week hiatus.

Benard praised the ABC sudser’s executive producer Frank Valentini for his generosity and understanding and revealed that “If I had to stay away another week, they would have had to recast.”

Upon his return to the studio, Benard faced a daunting challenge: filming eight episodes worth of material in two days. “I’m not going to tell you what it was, but you’ll see. It’s pretty intense,” he could but tease.

In keeping with the title of the special episode — “True Friendship” — the host gave much thanks to Steve Burton (Jason Morgan, GH), Jonathan Jackson (Lucky Spencer, GH), Vanessa Marcil (ex-Brenda Barett, GH) as well as his wife, Paula, and son Joshua.

Be sure to click on the video above to watch Maurice Benard’s full confessional. 

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