Starting a dialogue. Selena Gomez has spoken candidly about her struggles with mental health over the years.
The singer first sought treatment in 2014 after she was diagnosed with lupus. She has since attended various voluntary programs to manage anxiety, panic attacks and depression. Nine months after she completed treatment in January 2018, Us Weekly confirmed she was seeking “opened-ended” mental health treatment.
In April 2020, the Getaway star revealed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. “It doesn’t scare me once I know it,” she told Miley Cyrus in an episode of the latter’s “Bright Minded” Instagram series. “I think people get scared of that, right?”
The Rare Beauty founder has also used her platform to raise awareness about mental health, both by hosting conversations with experts and shedding light on various issues through her projects.
From 2017 to 2020, she served as an executive producer on the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why, which sparked many discussions about the struggles contemporary teens and young adults face.
“This is happening every day,” Gomez said during an Elvis Duran and the Morning Show interview in 2017, referring to the show’s serious themes. “Whether or not you wanted to see it, that’s what’s happening. The content is complicated. It’s dark and it has moments that are honestly very hard to swallow, and I understood that we were doing something that is difficult.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, which brought mental health to the forefront for people all over the world, the “Bad Liar” songstress continued to speak out about the importance of checking in with your emotions. In October 2020, she hosted an Instagram Live with Dr. Vivek Murthy, President Joe Biden’s surgeon general, to discuss the feelings of loneliness she was experiencing while in lockdown.
“In the beginning I couldn’t deal with it that well,” she said, discussing the early months of quarantine. “But then I started going into a place where I as writing and being active; it forced me to have that time. I’ve been able to spend time with those quality people a lot more than I ever have, and I’m spending a lot more time with my family.”
Murthy explained that Gomez’s story was a great example of why it’s important to share how you’re feeling. “If you recognize that [almost everyone is struggling in some way], you’ll recognize that there’s many ways to reach out,” he said. “When we serve other people, we shift the focus from ourselves to them in the context of a positive interaction … and we reaffirm to ourselves that we have value to bring to the world.”