Passion Pit singer Michael Angelakos streams brain treatment on Facebook Live

Passion Pit singer Michael Angelakos has talked to fans on Facebook while having electromagnetic brain treatment.

The 29-year-old was asked questions about his struggle with mental illness.

He previously revealed he had bipolar disorder after Passion Pit were forced to cancel the end of their 2012 tour for him to have treatment.

The singer's since set up an organisation, the Wishart Group, to help other musicians to deal with mental health issues.

He decided to livestream the transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), a treatment for depression, to highlight his condition and how invasive it can be.

A tweet shows Michael Angelakos having his TMS treatment.

TMS uses magnetic fields to simulate nerve cells in the brain and is only used in the US to treat severe cases of depression, not bipolar disorder.

"This is not lobotomy, this is not Suddenly, Last Summer," Michael said to one fan about writing music with a mental illness.

"This stuff helps me write music, which helps me not be symptomatic. I don't write music better when I'm manic or depressive."

He says he didn't remember touring the Manners album (2009) and the making of Gossamer three years later because of his bipolar.

TMS can be expensive because it's not covered by US insurance companies.

The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) says it is safe but can't prove whether it's effective or not.

Michael Angelakos says he used to get electroconvulsive therapy and told fans on the stream that people need to know what therapy looks like.

"Everyone says, 'I don't want to show people what I do, I don't want to talk about therapy.'

"If we don't talk about it, it's quite literally why no-one understands what we're talking about.

"So, I don't have anything to hide. I think this is an amazing treatment."

Michael Angelakos posted a video after having the treatment to thank fans for their support.

Michael talked to fans for around an hour while having treatment and answered questions with a medical technician treating him, called Bobby.

"I'm manic right now, I've not slept in three days," he says at one point.

"I'm tired, but not at all. I talk a lot. Ideas are kind of just going, going, going, going, and I need to calm down.

"Sometimes I take lithium, I would prefer to do this [TMS]. This helps calm me down."

The Facebook Live now appears to have been deleted from Passion Pit's Facebook page.

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