Brad Pitt, Ellen Degeneres, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, and 13 other Celebrities speak honestly about their mental health battles
Whether it’s opening up privately to your friends and family or tweeting to millions of followers, talking about mental health problems is never easy. A few years after her first whirlwind rise to fame as a fashion star, Cara Delevingne has spoken candidly about her own struggle with depression, most recently with a series of tweets to explain her time out from the modelling world.
Cara previously spoke out about the issues she faced as a teenager at the 2015 Women in the World Summit. ‘I think I pushed myself so far that I got to the point where I had a mental breakdown… I was completely suicidal. I didn’t want to live any more. 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.’
And she’s not the only celebrity who has come forward to share personal stories about their struggle with mental health. Here are a few others who have talked bravely about depression, showing mental health problems can affect all of us – regardless of situation or status.
Miley Cyrus
‘[My fans] know that I’ve struggled with depression, and that helped them get over theirs. That gives me a big purpose – a reason to wake up in the morning that’s bigger than to put on my f** king feathers and my little outfits.’
Demi Lovato
‘[My eating disorder and self harming] was a way of expressing my own shame, of myself, on my own body. I was matching the inside to the outside. There were some times where my emotions were just so built up, I didn’t know what to do. The only way that I could get instant gratification was through an immediate release on myself.’
Gwyneth Paltrow
‘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.’
‘I was angry, cynical and had this deep sadness like an anchor dragging everywhere I go. I just didn’t feel like fighting anymore. I didn’t feel like standing up for myself one more time – to one more person who lied to me. I really felt like I was dying – my light completely out. I said to myself, “Whatever is left in there, even just one light molecule, you will find it and make it multiply. You have to for you. You have to for your music. You have to for your fans and your family.”’
Catherine Zeta-Jones
‘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.’
Brad Pitt
‘I was hiding out from the celebrity thing. I was smoking way too much dope. I was sitting on the couch and just turning into a doughnut, and I really got irritated with myself. I got to, “What’s the point? I know better than this.” I used to deal with depression, but I don’t now, not this decade – maybe last decade. But that’s also figuring out who you are. I see it as a great education, as one of the seasons or a semester, “This semester I was majoring in depression.” I was doing the same thing every night and numbing myself to sleep, the same routine. I couldn’t wait to get home and hide out. But that feeling of unease was growing and one night I just said, “This is a waste.”’
Ellen Degeneres
‘When I walked out of the studio after five years of working so hard, knowing I had been treated so disrespectfully for no other reason than I was gay, I just went into this deep, deep depression.’
‘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 realized 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.’
Brittany Snow
‘Finally I went into the hospital when I was 19 for depression and for cutting. I wasn’t the person I wanted to be and I knew something was wrong. The therapist diagnosed me with anorexia, exercise bulimia — instead of throwing up you go to the gym for hours — depression and body dysmorphia.’
Jon Hamm
‘Honestly? Antidepressants help! If you can change your brain chemistry enough to think: “I want to get up in the morning; I don’t want to sleep until four in the afternoon. I want to get up and go do my s**t and go to work”. Reset the auto-meter, kick start the engine!’
Winona Ryder
‘You can’t pay enough money to cure that feeling of being broken and confused. It’s not like every day’s been great ever since. You have good days and bad days, and depression’s something that, y’know, is always with you.’
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.’
Jared Padalecki
“[The depression diagnosis] kind of hit me like a sack of bricks. I mean, I was 25 years old. I had my own TV show. I had dogs that I loved and tons of friends, and I was getting adoration from fans and I was happy with my work, but I couldn’t figure out what it was; it doesn’t always make sense is my point. It’s not just people who can’t find a job or can’t fit in in society that struggle with depression sometimes.”
Hayden Panettiere
‘There’s a lot of misunderstanding — there’s a lot of people out there that think that [postnatal depression] 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.’
John Green
‘Like millions of others, I take medication to help treat my mental illness. Treating chronic medical conditions must not be stigmatized.’
Brooke Shields
‘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.’
18:00 | 05 Apr 2016
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