Jill Janus kills herself at 43

Jill Janus, a mentally ill singer, killed herself at the age of 43. Many of the outlets telling the story appear to make her suicide sound sort of tragically romantic. Believe me, suicide is anything but romantic, even for Romeo and Juliet.

Janus was the front woman of Huntress, a heavy-metal group who put out songs with titles such as: "I Want To F**k You To Death," "Night Rape," and "Terror," to name a few. Janus formed the band in 2009 in Los Angeles.

Janus' body was found outside Portland, Oregon, after a long struggle with mental illness, according to her family and the band. She was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, both quite serious disorders.

The news broke through a statement by her publicist, Alexandra Greenberg, from relatives and her bandmates.

"I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder first, when I was 20. I started to show signs of it when I was 13, though, and I struggled with it through high school. But it started to get dangerous in my early teens," she reported. "I was suicidal constantly. I was very suicidal early on in my life. Then in my mid-twenties, it shifted to full-blown mania, where I can't really remember much of my twenties."

The way in which she killed herself was not revealed publicly. Perhaps her schizophrenia had an auditory hallucination component that told her to kill herself--we don't know, and perhaps we'll never know.

But it wasn't tragically romantic and I hope the usual hoard of copy-cats see it that way too.

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