In the early and mid-2000s, the Disney Channel featured a number of young actors who would turn out to be household names — Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Zendaya, Selena Gomez, and many others. It was the dream of many a young child to be a part of the Disney Channel magic and success, but, unfortunately, a number of those young stars struggled in the years after they left Disney. One of those actors is Selena Gomez — who starred in the hit show Wizards of Waverly Place and currently stars in one of Hulu’s top comedies, Only Murders In The Building, alongside Steve Martin and Martin Short.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Gomez recently opened up about her severe mental health struggles. During the interview, Gomez revealed that her mental health struggles got so bad that she contemplated suicide, although never acted on those dark thoughts:
“I’m going to be very open with everybody about this: I’ve been to four treatment centers. I think when I started hitting my early 20s 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… I thought the world would be better if I wasn’t there.”
Gomez also revealed that she suffered from psychosis several years ago and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder not long after. She was immediately put on several medications, which only seemed to worsen things. After searching, she found a psychiatrist who could help her and put her on an intense detox, as many of the medications she was on were unnecessary.
“He really guided me. But I had to detox, essentially, from the medications I was on. I had to learn how to remember certain words. I would forget where I was when we were talking. It took a lot of hard work for me to (a) accept that I was bipolar, but (b) learn how to deal with it, because it wasn’t going to go away.”
Gomez will explore her struggles with mental illness even more in her new documentary, Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me, which began streaming on Apple TV on November 4.
