39 Celebrities Who Have Opened Up About Mental Health

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Kendall Jenner

"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," she told Cara Delevingne in an interview. "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."

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Adele

"I can slip in and out of [depression] quite easily," Adele told Vanity Fair. "I had really bad postpartum depression after I had my son, and it frightened me," she said. "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."

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Ryan Reynolds

"I never, ever slept. Or I was sleeping at a perfect right angle — just sitting straight, constantly working at the same time," he told Variety, describing the anxiety he experienced while filming Deadpool. "By the time we were in post [production], we’d been to Comic-Con, and people went crazy for it. The expectations were eating me alive."

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Chrissy Teigen

"I also just didn’t think it could happen to me. 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," she wrote in an essay for Glamour. "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."

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Beyoncé

"It was beginning to get fuzzy―I couldn't even tell which day or which city I was at. I would sit there at ceremonies and they would give me an award and I was just thinking about the next performance," she told The Sun in 2011. "My mother was very persistent and she kept saying that I had to take care of my mental health."

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Michelle Williams

"When I disclosed it to our manager at the time, bless his heart, he was like, 'Y'all just signed a multimillion-dollar deal and you're about to go on tour. What do you have to be depressed about?' So I was like, 'Oh, maybe I'm just tired,'" she said of the depression she experienced during her time with Destiny's Child during an appearance on CBS's The Talk. "I was to that place where it got so dark and heavy, because sometimes you feel like, 'I'm the provider, I take care of people. I'm not supposed to be feeling this way. What do I do?' And I wanted out.

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Miley Cyrus

"[Depression is] more of an issue than people really want to talk about. Because people don't know how to talk about being depressed—that it's totally okay to feel sad. I went through a time where I was really depressed. Like, I locked myself in my room and my dad had to break my door down. It was a lot to do with, like, I had really bad skin, and I felt really bullied because of that. But I never was depressed because of the way someone else made me feel, I just was depressed," she told ELLE. "And every person can benefit from talking to somebody. I'm the most antimedication person, but some people need medicine, and there was a time where I needed some too. So many people look at [my depression] as me being ungrateful, but that is not it—I can't help it. There's not much that I'm closed off about, and the universe gave me all that so I could help people feel like they don't have to be something they're not or feel like they have to fake happy. There's nothing worse than being fake happy."

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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 me with my anxiety in ways I’ve never dreamed possible," she wrote on Instagram. "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. It ain’t about the ass, it’s about the brain."

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Dakota Johnson

"Sometimes I panic to the point where I don't know what I'm thinking or doing. I have a full anxiety attack….I have them all the time anyway, but with auditioning it's bad. I'm so terrified of it," said of her anxiety.

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Demi Lovato

“I think it's important that people no longer look at mental illness as something taboo to talk about," she said at the National Council for Behavioral Health in Washington DC. "It's something that's extremely common, one in five adults has a mental illness, so basically everyone is essentially connected to this problem and this epidemic. The problem with mental illness is people don't look at it as a physical illness. When you think about it, the brain is actually the most complex organ in your body. We need to treat it like a physical illness and take it seriously."

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Emma Stone

"The first time I had a panic attack I was sitting in my friend's house, and I thought the house was burning down. I called my mom and she brought me home, and for the next three years it just would not stop," Emma Stone told the Wall Street Journal.
"I would ask my mom to tell me exactly how the day was going to be, then ask again 30 seconds later. I just needed to know that no one was going to die and nothing was going to change."

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Gina Rodriguez

"I suffer from anxiety. And watching this clip I could see how anxious I was but I empathize with myself," she wrote on Instagram, along with a clip of herself. "I wanted to protect her and tell her it's ok to be anxious, there is nothing different or strange about having anxiety and I will prevail. I like watching this video. It makes me uncomfortable but there is a freedom I feel maybe even an acceptance. This is me. Puro Gina."

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Carrie Fisher

"I have a chemical imbalance that, in its most extreme state, will lead me to a mental hospital," Carrie Fisher revealed to Diane Sawyer. "I used to think I was a drug addict, pure and simple — just someone who could not stop taking drugs willfully. And I was that. But it turns out that I am severely manic depressive. You can't stop. It's very painful. It's raw. You know, it's rough... your bones burn... when you're not busy talking and trying to drown it out."

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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. It's so corny but it's true. You have no idea where the darkest times of your life might end, so you have to just keep going," she explained.

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Jared Padalecki

"I, for a long time, have been passionate about people dealing with mental illness and struggling with depression, or addiction, or having suicidal thoughts and, strangely enough, it's almost like the life I live, as well," he told Variety. "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."

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Dwayne Johnson

"I found that, with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you're not alone," he said in a YouTube video "You're not the first to go through it; you're not going to be the last to go through it. And oftentimes—it happens—you just feel like you're alone. You feel like it's only you. You're in your bubble. And I wish I had someone at that time who could just pull me aside and [say], 'Hey, it's gonna be OK. It'll be OK.' So, I wish I knew that."

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Lili Reinhart

"I had so much anxiety booking work, and I spent almost five months holed up in this bedroom in this house just feeling anxious, waiting for my next audition, and not doing anything else. It was the most miserable time of my life," she told W Magazine. "I had had to quit a few jobs in North Carolina because of how anxious they made me. My anxiety was so bad that I had to keep quitting jobs because I physically could not work...I threw up in my Uber because, one, I was carsick, and two, I was having a panic attack. I get home, lock the door in my room, immediately Skype my mom and said, 'Mom, I’m not okay.' I felt like my world was crashing. I didn’t want to admit defeat, but I was like, ‘I need to come home. My mental health is suffering, and it is making me physically ill.'"

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Nicki Minaj

“It was just one dead end after another," Nicki said of contemplating suicide. "At one point, I was, like, ‘What would happen if I just didn’t wake up?’ That’s how I felt. Like, ‘Maybe I should just take my life?’”

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Amanda Seyfried

“I’m on Lexapro, and I’ll never get off of it,” she told Allure. “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. 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.

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Lady Gaga

"When my career took off, I don't remember anything at all. It's like I'm traumatized. I needed time to recalibrate my soul," she explained in an interview. "I definitely look after my well-being...I openly admit to having battled depression and anxiety and I think a lot of people do. I think it's better when we all say: 'Cheers!' and 'fess up to it.'"

Kayleigh Roberts is the weekend editor at Marie Claire, covering celebrity and entertainment news, from actual royals like Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle to Hollywood royalty, like Katie Holmes and Chrissy Teigen. She’s a Ravenclaw who would do great things in Slytherin. To learn more about her, google “Leslie Knope eating salad GIF.

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