This is the exact reason why I chose to start this website, to help bring awareness to topics such depression and anxiety among gay men. A beautiful man, perfect on the outside, assumed to have it all, dead. Little did anyone know that Dror Barak, 38, now come to find out was struggling with some major depression issues. We need to push forward and get the conversation started on the topic of mental health. We need to diminish the stigma behind mental health issues and make it okay to talk about. Roman, whose real name was Dror Barak, should still be with us today.
UPDATE: We received a note from Dror’s boyfriend Sam who confirmed the sad news and asked that people be respectful with regards to Dror’s privacy in the comments.
Sam writes:
Details are mostly personal depression issues.
His business was doing amazingly well and was expanding rapidly and he was so busy he literally could not take any more clients on himself he had to hire more trainers. So it had nothing to do with that. I only say this because he was so proud of his business and I was so proud of him for being such a hard worker and building a business with dedicated top level personal training clients.
Despite what anyone thinks Dror was a loving kind person and anyone that would comment and say he wasn’t just probably misinterpreted his shyness as meanness. He was the most gentle, loving, kind, amazing man I have ever met.
Dror Barak, 38, was found dead Saturday night of an apparent suicide. A former Israeli military trainer who achieved stardom under the name Roman Ragazzi, Barak hadn’t been active in porn since 2008. He left the industry to concentrate on a fitness company he founded.
While working as an administrative aide for the Israeli Consulate scandal Barak Barak was outed as a porn star in 2007 by the New York Post’s Page Six gossips, resulting in a minor scandal. He resigned, then later started a fitness blog as well as what some say was a legendary career in porn. His boyfriend told a gay porn blog (NSFW) that though Barak’s business was going well, he suffered from depression.
It’s rumored that male porn stars have a very high rate of suicide, and according to this list posted on a NSFW blog, there appears to be some truth to the rumor. Susannah Breslin tried to explain the reasoning for this strange phenomenon over at Salon after the suicide of porn star Stephen Hill.
[article via Out Magazine]
