There’s no doubt that we’re more aware of and sensitive about mental health issues than ever before. Unfortunately, it’s also clear that a stigma still lingers around mental health issues and struggles, and its impact is noticeable — and harmful. Surveys have found that stigma prevents those with mental illness from reaching out for help, meaning it has a very real effect on their mental and physical wellbeing.One way to push back against the stigma and shame around mental health issues is to speak up about them in spite of it all, and recently, celebrities have been doing just that, sharing their experiences with depression, anxiety, and other mental health struggles with fans and followers.
These stars prove that when it comes to mental health issues, you don’t have to suffer in silence. In fact, mental health struggles are more common than you might think; according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, they affect approximately 1 in 5 U.S. adults and 1 in 6 young people from ages 6 to 17. While mental health issues like anxiety and depression can be daunting and isolating, knowing that you’re not alone — and hearing people you know speak about going through the same thing — can be life-changing.
That’s why we’re sharing these relatable, inspiring, and honest quotes from celebrities who have gone through it too. Ahead, read what stars like Adele, Beyoncé, Chrissy Teigen, and Kerry Washington had to say about living with mental health issues.
If you or someone you know is experiencing a mental illness, resources are available to help. Call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide & Crisis LifeLine and visit the National Alliance on Mental Illness website for more information.
A version of this article was originally published in December 2016.
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Adele
After having her son, Angelo, the 32-year-old singer opened up to Vanity Fair about her depression.
“I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me,” Adele shared in 2016. “I didn’t talk to anyone about it. I was very reluctant… Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it.”.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’Johnson
In a 2018 interview with Express, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson opened up about how his mother’s suicide attempt impacted his mental health.
“Struggle and pain is real. I was devastated and depressed,” Johnson shared. “I reached a point where I didn’t want to do a thing or go anywhere. I was crying constantly.”
The actor and former wrestler has also taken to social media to share his journey with fans in an effort to encourage others to not to stay silent about their struggles.
“We all go thru the sludge/sh*t and depression never discriminates,” he wrote on Twitter in 2018. Took me a long time to realize it but the key is to not be afraid to open up. Especially us dudes have a tendency to keep it in. You’re not alone.”
Beyoncé
Sasha Fierce is who we see on stage, an alter ego Beyoncé created — a persona the mom of three says she’s nothing like IRL.
“I’m not like her in real life at all,” she said. “I’m not flirtatious and super-confident and fearless like her,” Beyonce told Parade Magazine in 2006, per Today.com. Beyoncé says that in real life, she is actually shy and suffered from depression when her former group, Destiny’s Child split up.
“I didn’t eat,” she said. “I stayed in my room. I was in a really bad place in life, going through that lonely period, ‘Who am I? Who are my friends?’ My life changed.”
Chrissy Teigen
Chrissy Teigen opened up to Glamour in 2017 about her depression after giving birth to her daughter Luna.
“I had everything I needed to be happy. And yet, for much of the last year, I felt unhappy. What basically everyone around me — but me — knew up until December was this: I have postpartum depression. How can I feel this way when everything is so great? I’ve had a hard time coming to terms with that, and I hesitated to even talk about this.”
“I also just didn’t think it could happen to me,” Teigen added. “I have a great life. I have all the help I could need: John, my mother (who lives with us), a nanny. But postpartum does not discriminate. I couldn’t control it. And that’s part of the reason it took me so long to speak up: I felt selfish, icky, and weird saying aloud that I’m struggling. Sometimes I still do.”
Prince Harry
Prince Harry has spoken more and more about his mental health struggles over the years, telling The Telegraph in 2017 that he had “shut down all his emotions” for almost two decades after losing his mother, Princess Diana. The nonstop attention and harassment he received from tabloids also resulted in depression and paranoia, he said in court documents in 2023, per CBC, and in the prince’s 2023 memoir, Spare, he revealed that he’s suffered from agoraphobia as well. Harry specifically recalled being forced to push through”one speech, which couldn’t be avoided or canceled, and during which I’d nearly fainted,” Today.com reported.
Kendall Jenner
In a 2018 interview with Cara Delevigne for Harper’s Bazaar, Kendall Jenner took the opportunity to open up about her mental health, particularly her struggles with anxiety.
“I have such debilitating anxiety because of everything going on that I literally wake up in the middle of the night with full-on panic attacks,” the 24-year-old model shared.
“Where do I even start? Everything is so horrible, it’s hard to name one thing. I just think that the world needs so much love. I wish I had the power to send Cupid around the planet, as cheesy as that sounds. You go online and you see everyone saying the worst things to each other, and it’s hard to stay positive. It’s hard not to get eaten alive by all the negativity.”
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga opened up about struggling with depression during a 2015 interview with Billboard.
“I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life, I still suffer with it every single day,” said Gaga, who founded the Born This Way Foundation to support the mental and emotional wellness of young people. “I just want these kids to know that that depth that they feel as human beings is normal. We were born that way. This modern thing, where everyone is feeling shallow and less connected? That’s not human.”
Brooke Shields
Brooke Shields shared her personal experiencewith depression and postpartum depression when she called out Tom Cruise over his stance on antidepressants.
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression,” she wrote in a 2005New York Times op-ed,per Today.com. “If any good can come of Mr. Cruise’s ridiculous rant, let’s hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease.” Shields went on to publish a memoir,Down Came the Rain, about her experience with PPD.
Ryan Reynolds
Ryan Reynolds opened up about his anxiety and depression in 2018 in an interview with Mr. Porter, and has since continued to raise awareness for mental health issues.
“I tend to get pretty depressed and I have some issues with anxiety and things like that,” the dad of four shared. He went on to say that exercise helps lift his spirits. “Otherwise, I start to get a little bummed,” he said. “For me, it is more psychological. Exercise is a means of expelling those demons.”
Reynolds has also been open about how anxiety changed him as a parent — in a positive way. “Now I love that I have anxiety, I love that I’ve had anxiety,” he said in a 2024 interview with Hugh Jackman for People. “Because when I see my kids experiencing some of that, which is probably genetic, I know how to address it in a way that is compassionate, that actually allows them to feel seen in that anxiety.”
Catherine Zeta-Jones
In 2012, Catherine Zeta-Jones opened up about having bipolar II disorder. “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,” she told The Telegraph. “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.”
Kerry Washington
Kerry Washington has shared that she used food to cope with her mental health struggles. “I’d eat anything and everything, sometimes until I passed out,” Washington told Essence in 2009. “But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours. Keeping my behavior a secret was painful and isolating. There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame.”
Eventually, though, Washington reached out for help. “I started therapy, which I still do today,” she explained. “I also see a nutritionist and I meditate. Learning how to love myself and my body is a lifelong process. But I definitely don’t struggle the way I used to. Therapy helped me realize that maybe it’s okay for me to communicate my feelings.”
Ryan Phillippe
Ryan Phillippe spoke with Women’s Health in 2017 and opened up about his battle with depression.
“I think people fear being stigmatized or treated in a blanket fashion, which is sometimes the response to someone who says, ‘I struggle with depression,'” the father of two said. “But really, depression could manifest in a thousand different ways depending on who it is. I don’t think there’s any reason not to talk about it. We can help each other cope and give tools that we learn along the way.”
Kristen Bell
Frozen star Kristen Bell discussed her struggle with anxiety and depression in an essay for Time in 2016.
“When you try to keep things hidden, they fester and ultimately end up revealing themselves in a far more destructive way than if you approach them with honesty,” Bell wrote.
“I didn’t speak publicly about my struggles with mental health for the first 15 years of my career. But now I’m at a point where I don’t believe anything should be taboo. So here I am, talking to you about what I’ve experienced.”
Jon Hamm
The 49-year-old actor opened up to InStyle in 2017 to share that therapy helped him through his battle with depression, alcohol addiction, and grief after losing his parents young. (Hamm’s mother died when he was 9 and his father died when the actor was 20.)
“Medical attention is medical attention whether it’s for your elbow or for your teeth or for your brain,” Hamm said. “And it’s important. We live in a world where to admit anything negative about yourself is seen as a weakness, when it’s actually a strength. It’s not a weak move to say, ‘I need help.’ In the long run it’s way better, because you have to fix it.”
Khloé Kardashian
“Lord knows I’ve had stress and anxiety lately,” the Khloé Kardashian shared with fans back in 2015 via her app, per Marie Claire.
“This year has been absolutely horrible, but it’s almost done,” she continued. “I’m just praying that 2016 will be better. It has to be.” Kardashian also opened up about one of her coping mechanisms: exercise. “The gym has taken away so much of my stress,” she said. “It has helped calm me down. When I’m fidgety and I just feel like everything is closing in, I go to the gym. You’re building endorphins and feeling good about yourself. It’s saved me.”
Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey first opened up about his depression in 2004, telling CBS News, “There are peaks, there are valleys. But they’re all kind of carved and smoothed out, and it feels like a low level of despair you live in. Where you’re not getting any answers, but you’re living OK. And you can smile at the office. You know? But it’s a low level of despair. You know?”
In 2017, hetold UK publication iNews his experience of depression had shifted. “Now, when the rain comes, it rains, but it doesn’t stay,” he said. “It doesn’t stay long enough to immerse me and drown me anymore.”
Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd revealed to Glamour in 2006 that she’d spent 47 days in a Texas treatment facility for depression.
“I needed help. I was in so much pain,” she said. “They said, ‘No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good. You’re too smart and together. But you [and older sister Wynonna Judd] come from the same family, so you come from the same wound.’ No one had validated my pain before.”
Halle Berry
Halle Berry contemplated suicide following her divorce from ex David Justice, she told Parade in 2009, per Reuters. The Catwoman star shared that thinking about her family changed her mind. “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,” Berry said of her experience. “It was all about a relationship. My sense of worth was so low.”
Demi Lovato
Demi Lovato openly counsels fans about depression, which she says she's had since she was a child.
"Those of us here today know that mental illness has no prejudice," Lovato said in 2014. "It affects people of every race, age, gender, religion and economic status. It doesn't discriminate between Republicans or Democrats, either."I want to show the world that there is life — surprising, wonderful, unexpected life — after diagnosis."
Sarah Silverman
Sarah Silverman opened up to Glamour in 2015 about her depression saying she’s lived through some “very dark years.”
“I’ve lived with depression and learned to control it, or at least to ride the waves as best I can. I’m on a small dose of Zoloft, which, combined with therapy, keeps me healthy but still lets me feel highs and lows.”
Chris Evans
Chris Evans opened up to Men’s Health in 2019 sharing that his role of Captain America helped him overcome his fears.
“I do struggle. I get anxiety about certain things and press, things like that. “I asked every human being in my life what they thought, and they said I should do the movie, and then I went to therapy. I thought, ‘I’ll talk to my therapist! See what they have to say!’”
Emma Thompson
Not only is British actor Emma Thompson open about her own depression, but she is also adamant that other people with depression will find solace in talking about their experiences.
“I think my first bout of that was when I was doing Me and My Girl, funnily enough,” she told Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2010. “I really didn’t change my clothes or answer the phone, but went into the theatre every night and was cheerful and sang the Lambeth Walk. That’s what actors do. But I think that was my first bout with an actual clinical depression.”
Amanda Seyfried
Amanda Seyfried opened up to Allure in 2016 about the anxiety that led her doctor to refer her to a psychiatrist, who diagnosed her with OCD.
“A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is,” Seyfried told Allure at the time. “It should be taken as seriously as anything else. You don’t see the mental illness: It’s not a mass; it’s not a cyst. But it’s there. Why do you need to prove it? If you can treat it, you treat it.”
Jared Padalecki
Supernatural‘s Jared Padalecki got a super-sweet tribute at Comic-Con 2015, when fans held up lights to support his fight against depression.
“Whatever their struggles may be, people may be putting on this tough exterior because they don’t yet have the courage or the acceptance to say, ‘I’ve been there too. I’ve danced with these issues also, or my friend did, or my father did,’ Padalecki said at the time. “Generation by generation, we’re slowly stripping away that taboo, that strange dynamic of, ‘Oh, there must be a problem with you if you feel this way.’ I’m happy to be a part of that, whatever part I may play.”
Pete Wentz
Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz has spoken candidly about his long struggle with depression, saying of the cycle, “You feel guilty for feeling happy.”
“The hardest thing about depression is that it is so addictive,” he told Louder magazine. “If you let yourself get wrapped up in it, then it begins to feel uncomfortable not to be depressed. You feel guilty for feeling happy. That’s one of the most interesting struggles, to get to a point where you’re OK with feeling happy. I’m so far removed from the person [who made a suicide attempt at age 25]. That person is nearly unrecognizable to me. I didn’t know who I was then at all, I had no idea. I was in a complete haze. The decisions I was making were all over the place.”
Dolly Parton
As bubbly as she is, country icon Dolly Parton has confessed that her depression led her to think, “I wish I had the nerve to kill myself.”
According to the Independent, Parton fell into a depression after she was told she would never be able to give birth after a life-saving hysterectomy.
Naomi Judd
Naomi Judd experienced an intense struggle withdepression over the course of her life and tragically died by suicide in 2022. Describing her mental illness in a 2016 interview with Good Morning America, Judd said, “What I’ve been through is extreme. My final diagnosis was severe depression,” Judd told host Robin Roberts. “Treatment-resistant, because they tried me on every single thing they had in their arsenal.” Judd recalled times when she would “not leave the house for three weeks and not get out of my pajamas, not practice normal hygiene. It was really bad.”
Judd wrote a memoir that detailed her struggles, River of Time, and thanks to her candor and honesty, left a legacy of resilience in the face of depression.
“When we’re talking about mental illness, it’s very important to make the distinction between our loved one and the disease. It lies. It’s savage,” Naomi’s daughter Ashley Judd toldGood Morning America after her mother’s death. “My mother knew that she was seen and she was heard in her anguish, and … she was walked home. She was walked home.”
Zach Braff
Zach Braff told Parade magazine in 2007 that he resembled the depressed character he played in Garden State. “I think I suffer from some mild depression. So, to have millions of people go, ‘I watched your movie and related’ was the ultimate affirmation that I’m not a freak.”He told The Jewish Chronicle in 2012, “There have been times in my life when — and I’m sure many people can relate to this — being surrounded by lots of people can feel even more lonesome. Maybe some people’s depression comes from a realization that this life is it. What am I doing with it? Am I using my time wisely? And that’s an incredibly intimidating thought process.”
Marie Osmond
Marie Osmond experienced postpartum depression after the birth of her son Matthew in 1999. Michael also battled depression and took his own life."If I went through all of the postpartum depression just to understand what my son went through, then it was worth it," she told Mirror. "It was such a taboo subject. It is at a time in your life when you are supposed to be so happy."There are different forms, I didn’t have psychosis or anything like that. But 13 years ago, I was driving down the coast of California. I was a 40-something woman and I had lived enough life to know that what I was thinking was not accurate — even though it felt real to me. But a child like my son who is 18 doesn’t have enough life experience to know those thoughts aren’t real."
Rosie O’Donnell
Rosie O'Donnell began treating depression with antidepressants when she was 37. According to ABC News, she went through 10 years of seeing different therapists and avoiding medication before deciding to try it."I would list all my complaints of my childhood and they would listen and nod and say, 'I think you need medication,'" O'Donnell said. "And after they said it two or three times, I would get another shrink and change my number so they couldn't call me back."
Richard Dreyfuss
Richard Dreyfuss opened up about his manic depression back in November 2013 at a Hope for Depression Research Foundation luncheon."There's no shame in having depression," he told People. "By telling my own story, I hope to help remove the stigma. It never should be something to hide."Describing what it's like to live with manic depression, he said, "I trembled in fear. It's like the night before the test and you aren’t really sure about the subject and this balloon of self-loathing starts to swell up fast in anticipation of failure. I lived that feeling every day, every minute for my entire life."
Carrie Fisher
Carrie Fisher had manic depression and overdosed at 28, which she detailed in her book Wishful Drinking:
"One of the things that baffles me (and there are quite a few) is how there can be so much lingering stigma with regards to mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. In my opinion, living with manic depression takes a tremendous amount of balls. Not unlike a tour of Afghanistan (though the bombs and bullets, in this case, come from the inside). At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you're living with this illness and functioning at all, it's something to be proud of, not ashamed of. They should issue medals along with the steady stream of medication."
Cara Delevingne
Supermodel and Paper Towns star Cara Delevingne opened up about her depression on Twitter in 2016, as an explanation for the break she took from her modeling career.
"I suffer from depression and was a model during a particularly rough patch of self hatred," Delevingne wrote. "I am so lucky for the work I get to do but I used to work to try and escape and just ended up completely exhausting myself…I am focusing on filming and trying to learn how to not pick apart my every flaw. I am really good at that."
Sharon Osbourne
In May 2015, Sharon Osbourne took a break from hosting The Talk due to an emotional breakdown caused by depression.
“It’s very weird when you suffer from a bad depression,” she said. “I had a complete and utter breakdown. I woke up in Cedars-Sinai Hospital, and for probably three days, I knew nothing. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t talk… My brain just shut down on me. And it’s hard enough surviving in this world anyway, but when you take on too much — I was doing too much of everything, thinking that I’m superwoman. I’m so strong. I can handle this, I can handle that. And it just fused. My brain just totally fused. And I just couldn’t cope with anything.”
