26 Celebrities Who Have Opened Up About Depression, Anxiety, and Mental Health

"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."

Back in 2006, Beyoncé disclosed that she suffered from depression after Destiny's Child broke up, "I didn't eat. 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."

In 2011, she told The Sun she took a year off to focus on herself, "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. My mother was very persistent and she kept saying that I had to take care of my mental health."

Miley Cyrus opened up to ELLE: [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." 

"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.

On anxiety: "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." 

"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." 

Chrissy Teigen did not hold back in her Glamour open letter about  being diagnosed with 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, as everything becomes such a "thing." 

She continued, "Getting out of bed to get to set on time was painful. My lower back throbbed; my ­shoulders—even my wrists—hurt. I didn't have an appetite. I would go two days without a bite of food, and you know how big of a deal food is for me. One thing that really got me was just how short I was with people...."

"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. 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."

"I'm speaking up now because I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don't want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone. I also don't want to pretend like I know everything about postpartum depression, because it can be different for everybody. But one thing I do know is that—for me—just merely being open about it helps."

"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."

Fisher became an outspoken leader in the fight to educate and destigmatize mental health disorders. 

In a final advice column in The Guardian, Fisher was asked how to how to find peace while suffering from bipolar disorder. She wrote a beautiful, heartfelt response and closed by saying:

"You don't have to like doing a lot of what you do, you just have to do it. You can let it all fall down and feel defeated and hopeless and that you're done. But you reached out to me – that took courage. Now build on that. Move through those feelings and meet me on the other side. As your bipolar sister, I'll be watching," she wrote. "Now get out there and show me and you what you can do."

"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," Padalecki 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."

On choosing the wording for his campaign "Always Keep Fighting": "Even if there are a thousand small fights, even if every other minute you're thinking about suicide, or depression, or addiction, or if you have mental illness, I want people to hit it head on and take action. And to be proud that they're winning their fight, period."

The Riverdale star recently opened up about battling depression in a series of tweets. 

"Riverdale came into my life when I was going through the worst depression I had ever experienced. And in the end it completely saved me," she wrote.

Speaking to ELLE.com, Reinhart said, "Literally, I was sitting in the bathtub as I was writing that. I take like two baths a day, is that weird? I don't know. And I just felt inspired because for the past few weeks I've been experiencing depression, even though there are these wonderful things happening in my life. It doesn't mean that I'm not still struggling." 

"That's important because a lot of people undermine their own depression and anxiety because they're like, 'I'm not being bullied, I have a roof over my head, nothing's necessarily going wrong.' It just happens and it's just inside of you and that's not something you should be ashamed of. It's justified because it's happening."

"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," Gaga revealed 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.'"

"I've discovered that anxiety, panic attacks and depression can be side effects of lupus, which can present their own challenges," Gomez said to People. "I want to be proactive and focus on maintaining my health and happiness and have decided that the best way forward is to take some time off […] I know I am not alone by sharing this, I hope others will be encouraged to address their own issues."

Washington has spoken out about another widely taboo subject, binging, "I used food as a way to cope....I'd eat anything and everything, sometimes until I passed out. 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."

"I started therapy, which I still do today. 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. Instead of literally stuffing them down with food, maybe it's okay for me to express myself."

To Glamour in 2015: "I say that publicly because I think it's really important to take the stigma away from mental health. … My brain and my heart are really important to me. I don't know why I wouldn't seek help to have those things be as healthy as my teeth. I go to the dentist. So why wouldn't I go to a shrink?"

Zayn Malik penned an emotional essay about coping with anxiety. 

"The thing is, I love performing. I love the buzz. I don't want to do any other job. That's why my anxiety is so upsetting and difficult to explain. It's this thing that swells up and blocks out your rational thought processes. Even when you know you want to do something, know that it will be good for you, that you'll enjoy it when you're doing it, the anxiety is telling you a different story. It's a constant battle within yourself."

Here's what Princess Diana said about postpartum depression in a 1995 interview: "I was unwell with post-natal depression, which no one ever discussed... and that in itself was a bit of a difficult time. You'd wake up in the morning feeling you didn't want to get out of bed, you felt misunderstood, and just very, very low in yourself."

"When no one listens to you, or you feel no one's listening to you, all sorts of things start to happen. For instance you have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help, but it's the wrong help you're asking for. People see it as crying wolf or attention-seeking, and they think because you're in the media all the time you've got enough attention, inverted commas....I didn't like myself, I was ashamed because I couldn't cope with the pressures." 

"I've spent most of my life saying 'I'm fine,'" Prince Harry said in an interview with The Telegraph  journalist Bryony Gordon on her mental health podcast Mad World. 

"I can safely say that losing my mum at the age of 12 and therefore shutting down all of my emotions for the last 20 years has had a quite serious effect on not only my personal life but also my work as well...I have probably been very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions."

Prince Harry, along with Prince William and Kate Middleton, is now an ambassador for Heads Together, a British mental health organization. 

"My brother was a huge blessing. He kept saying 'This is not right, this is not normal—you need to talk about stuff. It's not normal to think that nothing's affected you.' All of a sudden, all of this grief that I have never processed started to come to the forefront."

Kristen Stewart on anxiety: "Between ages 15 and 20, it was really intense. I was constantly anxious. I was kind of a control freak. If I didn't know how something was going to turn out, I would make myself ill, or just be locked up or inhibited in a way that was really debilitating."

"I've come out the other end not hardened but strong. I have an ability to persevere that I didn't have before. It's like when you fall on your face so hard and the next time, you're like, Yeah, so? I've fallen on my face before." 

On going on antidepressants: "When I was 18, [my mom] said, 'If you start to feel like you are twisting things around you, and you start to feel like there is no sunlight around you, and you are paralyzed with fear, this is what it is and here's how you can help yourself.' And I've always had a really open and honest dialogue about that, especially with my mom, which I'm so grateful for. Because you have to be able to cope with it. I mean, I present that very cheery bubbly person, but I also do a lot of work, I do a lot of introspective work and I check in with myself when I need to exercise and I got on a prescription when I was really young to help with my anxiety and depression and I still take it today."

"And I have no shame in that because my mom had said if you start to feel this way, talk to your doctor, talk to a psychologist and see how you want to help yourself. And if you do decide to go on a prescription to help yourself, understand that the world wants to shame you for that, but in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin. Ever. But for some reason, when someone needs a serotonin inhibitor, they're immediately crazy or something. And I don't know, it's a very interesting double standard that I often don't have the ability to talk about but I certainly feel no shame about." 

 "This is something I haven't been open about, but it's a huge part of who I am," Cara Delevingne shared in 2015. "All of a sudden I was hit with a massive wave of depression and anxiety and self-hatred, where the feelings were so painful that I would slam my head against a tree to try to knock myself out. I never cut, but I'd scratch myself to the point of bleeding. I just wanted to dematerialize and have someone sweep me away."

"I thought that if I wanted to act, I'd need to finish school, but I got so I couldn't wake up in the morning. The worst thing was that I knew I was a lucky girl, and the fact that you would rather be dead … you just feel so guilty for those feelings, and it's this vicious circle. Like, how dare I feel that way? So you just attack yourself some more."

In her book, Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, Shields wrote about getting help: 

"If you think you might be suffering from any kind of postpartum mood disorder , or are aware of some preexisting condition in your life that could lead to it, DO NOT WASTE TIME! Get help right away....Don't be ashamed and don't disregard what you are feeling. It is better to be proactive. Postpartum depression is extremely treatable, and there are many ways to cope with and get through it. It is important to get educated and talk about how you are feeling. It rarely passes alone or without causing damage."

"I feel like there's this glamour, when you look at like a Tennessee Williams play, where the woman who has a psychological illness is in fur, laid out on a chaise. Whereas in reality, a woman with mental illness or a woman who is struggling with her psychological wellbeing is often in sweats and in a T-shirt that used to belong to her dad and is covered in food bits." Dunham joked on Refinery 29's video series RIOT. 

"I've always been anxious, but I haven't been the kind of anxious that makes you run 10 miles a day and make a lot of calls on your Blackberry. I'm the kind of anxious that makes you like, 'I'm not going to be able to come out tonight, tomorrow night or maybe for the next 67 nights.'"