Jackson Free Press

Josh Marks gained notoriety for his performance on the popular reality cooking show "MasterChef," reaching the finals and garnering attention from prominent chefs during the program's third season.

Unfortunately, the television show affected his mental health, Marks' family said.

"I don't think people realize the toll the reality show put on him," Marks' stepfather, Gabriel Mitchell, told the Chicago Tribune over the weekend. Members of his family said they didn't notice signs of mental illness in Marks until after "MasterChef" filming ended.

On Oct. 11, Marks, 26, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his hometown of Chicago; coroners ruled his death a suicide the following day.

The news comes after a July arrest when police charged Marks with assaulting a police officer and attempting to take the officer's weapon after they responded to an emergency phone call on the south side of Chicago.

Marks' mother, Paulette Mitchell, believes Marks' being diagnosed recently with schizophrenia after a diagnosis of bipolar disorder earlier this year was a huge setback.

"He couldn't bear the thought of another diagnosis," Mitchell told the Tribune. "He was just coming to accept the bipolar diagnosis."

Marks was a native of Chicago but had ties to Mississippi. Marks attended Tougaloo College on a basketball scholarship and worked in Vicksburg as an Army-contract specialist.

It was in Jackson where he developed his interest in food, cooking for friends and parties. His self-taught culinary skills carried over into the nationwide "MasterChef" competition, which narrows down its selection of aspiring chefs and cooks from a pool of nearly 30,000.

"I knew I had the skills and potential to be greater than a 'home cook,'" Marks wrote in the Jackson Free Press in 2012. "But I just had to go through the tangible lessons of life to release my potential."

Some of Marks' standout dishes on "MasterChef" included curry Cornish hen, chocolate souffle and lamb carimanolas, He participated in challenges that made contestants reinvent classic dishes and feed different-sized crowds of individuals.

"The actual challenges were the best learning experiences for me, because I gained so much cooking experience and was introduced to so many opportunities that I would have never received," Marks wrote in the JFP.

Marks' cooking style resulted largely from by his father's Panamanian and Caribbean heritage. In a JFP interview last year, Marks noted that his culinary tastes developed over time.

"When I was younger, my father would make me try this, or eat this," Marks said. "I guess you could say I really didn't care for the food, I just thought it was gross and too much, but I now know that my culinary palate and level of taste were just not developed enough to understand the cuisine."