You all know how I just love when celebrities get involved with mental health advocacy, especially when they use their own personal situations to help others, and it looks like the newest famous face to join the club is Alexa Ray Joel, daughter of musician Billy Joel and supermodel Christie Brinkley.

According to her most recent Facebook note, the singer, songwriter, and pianist seems to be doing much better after an incident in early December 2009 when she was rushed to the hospital after taking a handful of homeopathic pills in what some sources have reported as an apparent suicide attempt.

In the note, Alexa thanks her fans for their support and writes about the exciting plans she has in store for 2010:

I have many exciting new developments for the New Year, and I hope all of you can be a part of it!! This includes new creative projects, and even more volunteer work in hopes to give back to the community and, most importantly, to help young girls with something I feel I know a GREAT deal about: Heartbreak-Related Depression. Although it does not get much attention in our society, it is a very serious and painful condition that often gets “swept under the carpet”. I hope to bring this topic more to light… I’m even going back to school for Psychology in hopes to learn more about this and many other afflictions that many of us have had to face… after all, there’s nothing more fascinating than the human mind and it’s respective conditions…

According to UsMagazine.com, Alexa was “dealing with the end of a long-term relationship with former bandmate Jimmy Riot” at the time of the December incident.

Although it doesn’t take much more than common sense to understand the overall meaning of “heartbreak-related depression,” I haven’t yet been able to find any professional information (online, at least) about the phrase. (The first five pages of results after a quick Google of “heartbreak-related depression” alone brought me almost nothing but news about Alexa, and related scholar searches on Google brings mostly information about depression and our actual hearts.)

Of course, making a connection between heartbreak and depression isn’t a huge leap (we’re all human; we’ve been there on some level), but I think it’ll be interesting to see where Alexa takes this – especially if she sticks to her resolve to go back to school to study psychology.

Keep up with Alexa and how her plans for 2010 pan out at her official website as well as her Twitter and Facebook accounts, and in the meantime you can find more information about the psychology of relationships and love here at Psych Central.

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    Last reviewed: 4 Jan 2010