Joni Mitchell’s Health Update: Everything to Know About Her Ongoing Challenges

Joni Mitchell, 82, remains an enduring figure in music and culture. However, her life in recent years has been shaped by both her legendary career and significant health challenges. After a serious brain aneurysm in 2015 that required extensive recovery, Mitchell has made sporadic but meaningful public appearances. Most recently, she accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Juno Awards and performed onstage alongside fellow artists. Here’s what to know about Mitchell’s health in 2026.

Joni Mitchell recently commented on her 2015 brain aneurysm

Joni Mitchell was happy to accept the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Juno Awards in March 2026. She’s known as one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the 20th and 21st centuries, with her 1971 album, Blue, and 1974 album, Court and Spark, putting her on the map. Today, she’s celebrated for her incredible contributions. And while accepting her award, she mentioned her 2015 brain aneurysm.

“I want to thank the Junos for this great honor. I really appreciate it. I’m so glad to be back in Canada,” she said, according to People. “Some years ago — 10 or 12 years ago, I forget how long ago — I had an aneurysm, which changed my life, oddly, for the better.” Mitchell noted that the coma she was in helped her quit smoking. And she has a wonderful medical staff to this day.

“My home’s filled up with the most wonderful nurses,” she said. “I was on the road with men for years and years and years, now I live with a house full of women, and I have a fantastic therapist [who] goes everywhere with me,” she said. “So, my life has changed for the better out of a catastrophe, like a phoenix who grows a better life.”

Mitchell was found unconscious in her Bel Air home on March 31, 2015. She was then immediately transported to the hospital. In June 2015, Mitchell’s conservator, Leslie Morris, commented on Mitchell’s aneurysm that had happened a few months prior. According to HuffPost, Morris said that Mitchell was able to speak and was regaining her ability to walk. At the time, there was no confirmation regarding where or why the aneurysm occurred.

In July 2022, Mitchell played in public for the first time since the aneurysm.

The songwriter has also talked about living with Morgellons disease

Joni Mitchell has long spoken publicly about struggling with a mysterious skin condition known as Morgellons disease, a rare and controversial complaint that she first discussed in the early 2010s. Mitchell described the illness as causing unusual sensations, such as crawling, stinging, and fibers appearing on or under the skin. She once said the fibers she saw “protrude out of my skin like mushrooms” in various colors, remarking it felt “like it’s from outer space.”

“Morgellons is a slow, unpredictable killer — a terrorist disease: it will blow up one of your organs, leaving you in bed for a year,” she told the Los Angeles Times in 2010. “But I have a tremendous will to live: I’ve been through another pandemic — I’m a polio survivor, so I know how conservative the medical body can be. In America, the Morgellons is always diagnosed as ‘delusion of parasites,’ and they send you to a psychiatrist. I’m actually trying to get out of the music business to battle for Morgellons sufferers to receive the credibility that’s owed to them.”

Mitchell has asserted that this condition affected her ability to perform and influenced her withdrawal from touring. However, the medical community remains highly skeptical of Morgellons as a distinct dermatological disease. Major health authorities and researchers have found no definitive physical cause for reported symptoms. And many clinicians consider it a form of delusional infestation or a psychosomatic condition.

Joni Mitchell contracted polio at age 9

In 1995, Joni Mitchell spoke to Star about contracting polio as a child.

“I had polio at the age of 9,” she revealed while at her Bel Air home. “My spine was twisted up like a train wreck. I couldn’t walk. I was paralyzed. Forty years later, it comes back with a vengeance.”

“It’s like multiple sclerosis,” she continued. “It means your electrical system burns out, and your muscles begin to atrophy. It means impending paraplegia.”

She noted how she had to “guard” her “energy” at the time. “Just like the bunnies in those battery commercials. I’m the one that’s about to keel over. I’m not the one that’s going and going.”

As a result, Mitchell embraced New Age therapies.

“Basically, what the American Medical Association says is, ‘Lie down and die,'” she continued. “But over there in Mysteryland, where I’ve chosen my medical aid, there’s hope.”

“I’m in the hands of two kinds of occult types who give me energy transfusions by pointing their fingers at me,” she said. “I’ve got this Chinese guy who’s trying to address my DNA and tell it that nothing ever happened. Well, maybe he can do it. I give him full faith, because faith is luminous.”

In 2020, Mitchell spoke to The Guardian about coming back after her aneurysm. She also mentioned recovering from polio.

“I haven’t been writing recently. I haven’t been playing my guitar or the piano or anything,” she said at the time. “No, I’m just concentrating on getting my health back. You know what? I came back from polio (at age 9), so here I am again, and struggling back.”