Thankfully, in today’s world celebrities are choosing to speak out more and more about their experiences with mental health. We’ve rounded up 20 celebrities who have openly spoken about their mental health – from anxiety to depression.
1. Pink
Pink has opened up about her mental health journey, speaking to Carson Daly on Today. The US singer said she’s struggled with anxiety and depression and is an advocate for therapy, sharing that she and husband Carey Hart “have been in couples counselling almost our entire 17 years that we’ve been together.”
“For my generation, I feel like it was depression and suicide and suicide is super prevalent still, but now it’s like it comes from a place of anxiety,” the singer said.
She continued: “And I get that, I fully understand that and I’ve been depressed; I have anxiety. I overthink everything.”
2. Sophie Turner
Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner has opened up about the impact fame has had on her mental health. In an interview with Dr. Phil on his podcast, Phil in the Blanks, the actress revealed that negative comments about her character on social media caused a decline in her mental health. “I would just believe it. I would say, ‘Yeah, I am spotty. I am fat. I am a bad actress.’ I would just believe it. I would get [the costume department] to tighten my corset a lot. I just got very, very self-conscious,” she explains.
While her struggles with mental health have been significant since she was about 17, the star says she doesn’t think she is capable of hurting herself. “It’s weird. I say I wasn’t very depressed when I was younger, but I used to think about suicide a lot when I was younger. I don’t know why though,” Turner said. “Maybe it’s just a weird fascination I used to have, but yeah, I used to think about it. I don’t think I ever would have gone through with it. I don’t know.”
3. Troian Bellisario
Pretty Little Liars star Troian Bellisario has opened up about her battle with mental illness in a moving first-person account for Lenny Letter. Although Bellisario doesn’t name her particular condition, she has struggled with an eating disorder and feelings that she is never good enough.
But Bellisario has overcome her eating disorder thanks to “hard introspection, intense medical and mental care, a supportive family, friends and a patient and loving partner.” Bellisario has recently starred in, written and produced an independent film, Feed, based on her experiences, which Sony Pictures has released today.
4. Osher Gunsberg
In a poignant blog post, Bachelor host Osher Gunsberg has revealed his ongoing struggle with mental illness. In the post, titled “When you picture someone with a mental illness, picture me in a nice tailored suit” and written for HuffPost Australia, Gunsberg details the day he ‘lost his mind.’ He was living in Venice Beach, California at the time, shortly after the finale of season one of The Bachelor.
After experiencing paranoid delusions and spiraling out of control, Gunsberg sought medical help to get his condition – anxiety disorder and OCD – under control.
5. Sarah Michelle Gellar
Sarah Michelle Gellar is the latest celebrity to open up about her battle with mental illness. The star took to Instagram to share the postpartum depression diagnosis she received after the birth of her first child, Charlotte, now seven years old. Charlotte now has a little brother, Rocky, aged four.
6. Chrissy Teigen
Everybody’s favourite social media queen Chrissy Teigen has recently discussed her ongoing struggles with post-partum depression in an emotional tell-all open-letter. The 31-year-old model and television personality gave birth to her first child, daughter Luna, who she shares with husband John Legend, in April 2016.
After going to see her doctor, Teigen was diagnosed with post-partum depression and anxiety. Each year, 1 in 7 Australian women who give birth are affected by mental illness. Teigen is not the only well-known celeb to speak out about the difficulties one faces post-childbirth, as Adele recently revealed in *that* Grammy’s-acceptance speech: “…in my pregnancy, and through becoming a mother, I lost a lot of myself. I struggled, and I still do struggle being a mum – it’s really hard”.
7. Kendall Jenner
We’re given glamorous glimpses of Kendall Jenner’s life on social media – exclusive parties with famous friends, sipping cocktails on super yachts and lounging about her multi-million dollar home(s) – but the reality-TV-star-turned-model has revealed that her life isn’t all rosy on her personal website, kendallj.com.
After listing her personal peaks of 2016 (maybe don’t compare them to your own… unless you too have a slew of magazine covers, a new house and travels to Barbados, Barcelona, Paris and Cannes to show for the last 12 months), Kendall turns to the pitfalls – the first being her struggle with anxiety.
“Anxiety was a huge hurdle for me to deal with this past year (and security concerns didn’t help), but I think I’m finally learning how to cope,” she writes. She then links to another post, where she credits breathing exercises and mindfulness to helping her handle her anxiety.
8. Hayden Panettiere
Hayden Panetierre has spoken out about her struggle with postnatal depression since returning from treatment at a facility in May last year. She spoke on Good Morning America this week about how she has dealt with everything,
“I think I’m a better mom because of it, because you never take that connection for granted,” she said.
“I think it helped me identify what was going on, and to let women know that it’s OK to ask for help and that it’s OK to have a moment of weakness and it doesn’t make you a bad person. It doesn’t make you a bad mother. It makes you a very strong, resilient woman. You’ve just got to let it make you stronger.”
She has previously said of the mental illness, “There’s a lot of misunderstanding — there’s a lot of people out there that think that it is not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, that “Oh, it’s hormones.” They brush it off. It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary, and women need a lot of support.”
9. Amanda Seyfried
It’s not the first time the actress has opened up about her mental health, speaking to Allure magazine back in October.
“I’m on Lexapro, and I’ll never get off of it. I’ve been on it since I was 19, so 11 years. I’m on the lowest dose. I don’t see the point of getting off of it. Whether it’s placebo or not, I don’t want to risk it. And what are you fighting against? Just the stigma of using a tool?
“A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is. It should be taken as seriously as anything else.”
10. Sylvia Jefferies
The Today show newsreader revealed that early starts on the show took a serious toll on her wellbeing after she joined the morning program in June 2014.
“It’s very easy to slip into an unhealthy lifestyle and a low mood when you’re excessively tired and sleep-deprived,” she told The Daily Telegraph. “I’ve always been a happy, glass-half-full person but I found I was more susceptible to sinking into a low mood and my mental state was changing quite radically.”
Jeffreys attributes exercise and a healthy diet for pulling her out of what she calls “the blues.”
11. Jesinta Franklin
Model Jesinta Campbell has been an advocate for mental health and has shared her support for husband Buddy Franklin as he dealt with his own mental illness. Now the Aussie model has revealed she regularly seeks professional help to keep her own mental health in check.
“I am not ashamed to say that I see a professional regularly myself,” she tells OK! magazine. “I don’t have any fear of talking about it and being open about my mental health or helping those around me feel more comfortable talking about it.”
12. Jessica Marais
Aussie actress Jessica Marais also spoke with Nova FM about her struggle with bipolar, saying: “I never as a public figure think that I can instruct people on how to deal with issues like that. But what I will say is that I’ve learnt to be more open with the people close to me when I’ve had struggles of my own.”
13. Gwyneth Paltrow
On postnatal depression: “When my son, Moses, came into the world in 2006, I expected to have another period of euphoria following his birth, much the way I had when my daughter was born two years earlier. Instead, I was confronted with one of the darkest and most painfully debilitating chapters of my life.”
14. Winona Ryder
“You can’t pay enough money to cure that feeling of being broken and confused. It’s not like everyday’s been great ever since. You have good days and bad days, and depression’s something that, y’know, is always with you.”
15. Halle Berry
“I was sitting in my car, and I knew the gas was coming when I had an image of my mother finding me. She sacrificed so much for her children, and to end my life would be an incredibly selfish thing to do. My sense of worth was so low. I had to reprogram myself to see the good in me. Because someone didn’t love me didn’t mean I was unlovable. That’s what the break-up of my marriage reduced me to. It took away my self-esteem. It beat me down to the lowest of lows.”
16. Brooke Sheilds
“If I had been diagnosed with any other disease, I would have run to get help. I would have worn it like a badge. I didn’t at first—but finally, I did fight. I survived.”
17. Jim Carey
“I was on Prozac for a long time. It may have helped me out of a jam for a little bit, but people stay on it forever. I had to get off at a certain point because I realised that, you know, everything’s just okay. You need to get out of bed every day and say that life is good. That’s what I did, although at times it was very difficult for me.”
18. Lena Dunham
“Promised myself I would not let exercise be the first thing to go by the wayside when I got busy with Girls Season 5 and here is why: it has helped with my anxiety in ways I never dreamed possible. To those struggling with anxiety, OCD, depression: I know it’s mad annoying when people tell you to exercise, and it took me about 16 medicated years to listen. I’m glad I did.”
19. Ellie Goulding
“I was sceptical [about having cognitive behavioural therapy] at first because I’d never had therapy, but not being able to leave the house [because of panic attacks] was so debilitating. And this was when my career was really taking off…
“My surroundings would trigger a panic attack, so I couldn’t go to the studio unless I was lying down in the car with a pillow over my face. I used to beat myself up about it. There were a couple of times after I released Delirium when I was doing promo and thought, “Oh god, it’s coming back, it’s coming back,” but it didn’t. I think my body has become quite good at controlling anxiety.”
20. Cara Delevingne
“I think I pushed myself so far [at school] that I got to the point where I had a mental breakdown. I was completely suicidal, I didn’t want to live anymore.
“I thought that I was completely alone. I also realised how lucky I was, and what a wonderful family and wonderful friends I had, but that didn’t matter. I wanted the world to swallow me up, and nothing seemed better to me than death.
“It’s about finding people around you who have your best interests at heart. I had a lot of people around me who were just after what I gave them, not looking after me. So it’s about finding people who care about you, and support you. And I’ve now been able to become a support for other people as well.”
21. Catherine Zeta-Jones
“This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them. If my revelation of having bipolar has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.
“I’m not the kind of person who likes to shout out my personal issues from the rooftops but, with my bipolar becoming public, I hope fellow sufferers will know it is completely controllable. I hope I can help remove any stigma attached to it, and that those who don’t have it under control will seek help with all that is available to treat it.
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