Many artists and celebrities began in the entertainment industry when they were young, probably unaware of how it worked. Selena Gomez, who grew up in Grand Prairie, Texas, managed to break into the industry with the help of the Disney Channel.
She is now one of the world’s biggest and most influential pop stars. Not only does she have albums that define an entire generation, but she has also made significant contributions to changing people’s perceptions of mental illnesses.
Gomez painstakingly detailed her struggle with a mental disorder in a new Rolling Stone article, which she also discusses in her recently released documentary, “Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me,” which is available on Netflix and Apple TV.
Many people were unaware that Gomez had been clinically diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. In 2020, she revealed this candidly during an Instagram Live with her close friend Miley Cyrus.
During the candid and barefoot interview, Gomez revealed that she had visited four treatment centers in the last few years.
She noted:
“I think when I started hitting my early twenties is when it started to get really dark, when I started to feel like I was not in control of what I was feeling, whether that was really great or really bad.”
Living with lupus has taken a toll on Gomez’s physical and mental health and her career. She admitted in the interview that she had to break down in the middle of press tours, not knowing what was going on after being struck by a sudden bout of intense sadness.
Gomez also admitted in the interview that she had considered suicide and had been thinking about it for a few years.
The singer ominously recalls:
“I thought the world would be better if I wasn’t there.”
In particular, Gomez recalled hearing voices in 2018 and being admitted to a treatment facility following a devastating episode of psychosis. To this day, the singer claims she has no complete recollection of what happened but spent several months in paranoia.
Apart from that, Gomez believes her distress stems from several factors, including her struggle to find her “authentic artistic voice,” removing the “Disney polish,” and aging alongside her fans.
She opened up:
“I grew up thinking I would be married at 25. It wrecked me that I was nowhere near that – couldn’t be farther from it. It was so stupid, but I really thought my world was over.”
Gomez, in the most genuine way possible, is willing to share her recovery story with the world through her new documentary, which she revealed she almost didn’t sign off.
She said:
“I’m just so nervous. Because I have the platform I have, it’s kind of like I’m sacrificing myself a little bit for a greater purpose. I don’t want that to sound dramatic, but I almost wasn’t going to put this out. God’s honest truth, a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure I could do it.”
Since then, Selena Gomez’s brave disclosure of her bipolar disorder has been praised for shedding light on her mental illness and elevating the discourse on the often-shy-away topic in the media.