A real descent into hell.
Jake Lloyd, who played young Anakin Skywalker in the film "Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace" at the age of 9, has been in a rehabilitation center for mental health problems for almost a year, announced his mother.
In an interview with Scripps News, Lisa Loyd gave details regarding her son's mental health, reflecting on his difficult childhood linked to his status as a child star after filming the George Lucas film released in 1999, including he was the hero.
“Jake started having problems in high school after the movie came out,” she recalls.
In the past, Jake Lloyd had already mentioned the many autographs that the students of his establishment asked him or the sounds of the lightsaber that he had to face when he passed in the corridors.
“I don’t know what reality I am in”
His mother remembers the first time she realized that her child's personality had changed.
“He started talking about
realities
.
He didn't know if he was in this reality or a different reality.
I didn't really know what to answer him.
When she asked him if he had finished his homework, he replied, "I don't even know if I should do it."
I don’t know what reality I’m in.”
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She then took him to a doctor who mentioned possible bipolar disorder and prescribed him various medications that never really worked.
After graduating, he was enthusiastic about continuing his studies, only to be overtaken by his demons.
“He missed a lot of classes and he told me that people followed him,” says his mother.
Jake claimed to see people with “black eyes” looking at him in the street and to have had conversations at night with a famous presenter through his television.
Doctors then diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, which “plunged him into even worse depression,” explains Lisa Lloyd.
History of schizophrenia on his father's side
In 2018, the sudden death of her younger sister Madison didn't help the situation.
In March 2023, Jake had what his mother calls a psychotic break.
While he was driving with his mother, he turned off the ignition in the middle of a highway and created a traffic jam, before other road users called the police.
“The police arrived on scene and asked Jake a few questions.
He was talking to them, but none of it made any sense.
It was gibberish.”
Rather than being taken to prison, Jake was admitted to the hospital before being transferred to an inpatient program at a mental health rehabilitation center, where he has now been for 10 months.
After claiming that her son loves all Star Wars movies, his mother wanted to put an end to another misconception about her son that it was Star Wars that contributed to his mental illness.
“It would have happened anyway,” she insists, pointing out a history of schizophrenia on her father’s side.