Professor Green: Mental Health, Music, and Relationships

When a rapper spends as much time talking about therapy as chart positions, you know something unusual is going on. Professor Green has spent more than a decade pairing UK hits with documentaries on suicide and mental illness, and his own anxiety and depression — which he described in a 2014 interview with Official Charts — sit at the centre of that work. The thread running through it all is simple: Stephen Manderson turned personal struggle into public advocacy, and his diagnoses and relationships shaped every step.

Full Name: Stephen Manderson ·
Known As: Professor Green ·
Age (2026): 42 ·
Documentary: Suicide and Me ·
Marriage: Millie Mackintosh (2013–2016) ·
Children: None

Eleven rows of biographical data, one pattern: nearly every turning point — chart success, marriage, divorce, diagnosis — lands between 2008 and 2016.

What has Professor Green been diagnosed with?

If you’re hoping for a single clean diagnosis, there isn’t one. Professor Green has described a cluster of overlapping conditions, and he has been unusually honest about how long it took him to name them.

What specific mental health conditions has Professor Green discussed?

• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) — he was diagnosed with it as a child, and later described having bad anxiety, depression, OCD, and hypochondria (Official Charts, 2014)
• Acute anxiety disorder — a 2018 profile in Square Mile said he had suffered from it since early childhood (Square Mile)
• Anxiety since childhood — he told Vice he battled it for decades before realising what it was (Vice)

I’ve been down but I’m back on top.

Professor Green, reflecting on his recovery (Official Charts, 2014)

That “back on top” line captured where he stood in 2014: still making music, but now publicly carrying anxiety, depression, and OCD. The Vice interview a few years later added the longer view — the anxiety had been there since childhood, only slowly named.

How has his diagnosis affected his career?

• He made six hard-hitting TV documentaries between 2010 and 2014, covering suicide, homelessness, poverty, and drugs (Vice)
• His 2015 BBC film Suicide and Me became his first documentary and established him as a prominent mental-health voice (Happiful)
• He has described taking antidepressants for the first time as a turning point (BBC Life Hacks)

That TV work did not come out of nowhere. After a Radio 1 documentary about his life, executives asked him to make a version for television, and the films followed (Vice). Suicide and Me is anchored in his father’s suicide — the topic that made the documentary so personal.

The BBC’s Life Hacks profile later noted that he documented this period of his life in that film. By 2018, Square Mile was describing him as one of the UK’s most active mental-health campaigners. He sits alongside public figures like Ruby Wax and Gavin Henson as celebrities who have turned diagnoses into advocacy.

The implication: his diagnosis did not sideline his career, it redirected it. The music still runs alongside the advocacy, but the mental-health work is now what defines his public role.

What song made Professor Green famous?

The short answer is “Read All About It”, his 2011 single with Emeli Sandé. The slightly longer answer starts in 2008, with a battle rap tournament he won before he had any record deal.

What is Professor Green’s biggest hit?

Song: Read All About It ·
Featured artist: Emeli Sandé ·
UK Singles Chart: No. 1 (2011) (Official Charts)

Official Charts, which compiles the UK Singles Chart, records “Read All About It” as the song that broke Professor Green into the mainstream. It reached number one in 2011, making it his biggest commercial single by any measure.

What was his first successful single?

• July 2008 — won the inaugural JumpOff MySpace £50,000 battle rap tournament (Confetti Institute)
• July 2010 — released debut album Alive Till I’m Dead (Confetti Institute)

The record before “Read All About It” was built in battles, not playlists. A BBC Radio 1 profile from 2011 traced his rise from underground MC to chart success and identified the JumpOff win as the launch point (BBC Radio 1).

That is why “first successful single” does not have a clean answer. His early success was live and competitive; “Read All About It” was the first record to cross into the mainstream. He belongs to a generation of famous UK rappers who made that same leap from mixtapes to chart stardom.

Why did Millie Mackintosh and Professor Green split?

Professor Green and Millie Mackintosh married in 2013 and divorced in 2016 — a short, heavily publicised marriage between a chart rapper and a reality television personality. The key facts table above records the dates; the story behind them is more complicated.

What were the reasons for their divorce?

• Married: 2013; divorced: 2016 (key facts table)
• Reported reason: irreconcilable differences — a legal description that leaves the human story untold
• Green has since spoken about the split in interviews (Evening Standard interview)

Professor Green has addressed the breakdown of the marriage in interviews, and Mackintosh has reflected on it in later coverage. Neither has given a full, explicit account of what caused the split — which is why the reasons remain only partially public.

Did Professor Green’s mental health contribute to the split?

It would be easy to build a narrative that his struggles caused the split, but neither Green nor Mackintosh has claimed it, and no reporting has documented it. The honest position is that the full reasons remain private (for a wider look at how high-profile couples handle very public endings, see our celebrity relationships timeline).

The takeaway: absence of a public explanation is not evidence of a hidden scandal. It means two people chose to keep the end of their marriage private, while living very public lives.

Is Professor Green still with Karima McAdams?

Yes, as far as the public record shows. Professor Green has been in a relationship with Karima McAdams since around 2020 (Evening Standard interview).

Who is Karima McAdams?

• His current partner, publicly linked since around 2020
• The couple maintain a public relationship
• Marital status: not confirmed — no announcement has been made

The relationship has mostly been covered through lifestyle and interview media. The public record says more about the partnership than about McAdams herself — most coverage treats her primarily as Green’s partner, which fits the way he keeps his private life carefully managed.

How long have they been together?

Together since: around 2020 ·
Status: confirmed relationship ·
Married: not confirmed

Coverage places the start of the relationship in around 2020, and the couple have been consistent in the years since. The only loose end is marriage: there is no announcement on the record, and the question stays open.

Why this matters: after a very public divorce, Green has built a relationship without turning it into content. The confirmed facts are simple; the only open question is the wedding question, and neither party has answered it publicly.

Do Millie Mackintosh and Professor Green have any children together?

No. That is the short answer, and it is one of the few questions in this story with a clean response.

How many children do they have?

Children together: None ·
Professor Green’s children: None as of 2026 ·
Mackintosh’s later family: children with Hugo Taylor

Professor Green and Millie Mackintosh have no children together (Wikipedia). Mackintosh has since married Hugo Taylor and started a family — a separate chapter covered in our Millie Mackintosh biography. Green, as of 2026, has no children.

Why do they not have children together?

• No public statement from either party explains the absence of children
• The marriage lasted three years, from 2013 to 2016 — a documented window, not a stated reason

The honest position is that the public record does not answer this. The confirmed fact is simply that they have no children together; everything else is private.

The pattern: here, as in the divorce itself, the public record goes quiet. No explanation, no statement — which is itself a form of privacy in a very public story.

Career timeline: from battle rap to mental-health advocacy

Five dates, one arc: a battle rapper becomes a chart star, then a mental-health campaigner, with the music running in parallel the whole way.

The arc of those dates is consistent: every major pivot — the battle rap win, the number one, the suicide documentary — happened in roughly the same span that his marriage began and ended. That is not a coincidence of timing; it is the period when his public identity shifted from rapper to advocate.

The confirmed facts and what’s still unclear

After sorting through interviews, profiles, and chart records, here is where the public record actually stands.

The pattern: the verifiable record is narrower than the surrounding story, but the confirmed facts hold up to checking.

Key quotes on mental health and the marriage

Across interviews, documentaries, and a 2026 panel, Professor Green has been direct about what anxiety feels like from the inside. Millie Mackintosh has spoken more briefly about the marriage and its aftermath.

His brain can be his own opposition.

Professor Green, speaking about living with anxiety (EDP24, February 2026)

It was a very public relationship, and the ending was very public too.

Millie Mackintosh, reflecting on her marriage to Professor Green (Evening Standard interview coverage)

The pattern across both voices: Green frames his mental health as a struggle he is still managing, not a problem he has solved; Mackintosh frames the marriage’s end as public and painful. Neither turns the divorce into a simple story with a villain.

The takeaway

Professor Green’s story is no longer just a music story. The records made the fame possible, but the diagnoses, the documentaries, and the decade of campaigning are what give that fame its lasting purpose. He has been open about anxiety, depression, OCD, and his father’s suicide, and he continues to carry that conversation into 2026. For music fans, the trade-off is straightforward: he still tours, but the setlist now shares space with a longer conversation about mental health. For anyone facing similar struggles, the choice is clear: keep the conversation private, as he did for years, or name it openly the way he eventually did — his own record shows which path he chose.

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