Actor and producer Brad Pitt shared some devastating news with his fans recently. The Fight Club star spoke to QG and revealed he’s been struggling to recognize people’s faces, a condition medically known as prosopagnosia or “face blindness.”
With a worrying tone in his voice, the famous Hollywood star revealed that he hasn’t yet been officially diagnosed with the condition, but he is certain he has it.
He said that he feels fearful because he believes his inability to recognize faces has led people to believe he’s “remote and aloof, inaccessible, self-absorbed.” Pitt added that he wanted to meet other people having this condition.
“Nobody believes me,” Pitt was reported to have told the reporter, and it’s not hard to understand why.
Besides the fact that most people have never heard of “face blindness,” this condition is real and presents a real challenge to those who are forced to live with it.
According to the National Institute of Health, prosopagnosia is a neurological disorder that can cause people to have difficulty recognizing even family members or friends. According to research, it can affect 1 in 50 people.
The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Strokes states that there is no connection between “face blindness” and memory loss, vision problems, or learning impairment.
In an article for the New York Times, Dani Blum speaks of the signs, the causes, and the remedies of the disorder, writing that “It is not the same as forgetting or occasionally having trouble finding the correct word,” adding that the severity differs from person to person.
Further, this condition may lead to chronic anxiety or depression due to the loneliness and fear that are frequently associated with it.
“Navigating basic social relationships with prosopagnosia can become difficult,” Blum writes.
The causes are frequently related to stoke, brain trauma, or simply genetic predisposition. However, those who have it don’t seem to have any visible structural abnormality in the brain and that is why doctors are uncertain how to treat it properly. Some treatments that help people with the condition put on focus on trying to come up with different ways to recognize people beyond just their facial features.
We hope Brad Pitt would receive the appropriate help to keep his condition under control as much as that is a possibility.