‘I thought my world was over’: Selena Gomez says she contemplated suicide for years after bipolar diagnosis
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
Selena Gomez has said that she thought about suicide for a long time after struggling with psychosis, which resulted in her being diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In a candid new interview with Rolling Stone as she gets ready for the debut of her next Apple TV+ documentary, ‘My Mind and Me,’ the singer, 30, spoke up about her issues with mental health. She said, “I thought the world would be better if I wasn't there,” adding that she had never attempted suicide.
Selena disclosed that during her battle with her mental health, she had visited four therapy facilities. “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 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,” she remarked. Selena went through a series of highs and lows that lasted for weeks or months, according to Rolling Stone. She also struggled to pinpoint the precise cause of the emotions and she would occasionally get insomnia that lasted for days.
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'It gave me such strength': Selena Gomez opens up about her bipolar diagnosis in new documentary
Selena added that during her lowest points, she would sometimes stay in bed for weeks. She told, “I have a gift and I wanted to share it with people. It would start with depression, then it would go into isolation. Then it just was me not being able to move from my bed. I didn't want anyone to talk to me. My friends would bring me food because they love me, but none of us knew what it was. Sometimes it was weeks I'd be in bed, to where even walking downstairs would get me out of breath.” Selena believes that a number of things, including her profession, her health, and not achieving some of the life goals she had set out for herself as a young girl, contributed to her suffering.
She told Rolling Stone, “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.” She also acknowledged feeling like an outsider among the cool celebs and struggled to express her concerns to pals who weren't renowned. “I never fit in with a cool group of girls that were celebrities. My only friend in the industry really is Taylor [Swift], so I remember feeling like I didn’t belong. I felt the presence of everyone around me living full lives. I had this position, and I was really happy, but … was I? Do these materialistic things make me happy? I just didn’t like who I was, because I didn’t know who I was.” she remarked.
In 2018, Selena began to hear voices, which finally caused a psychotic episode that put her in a treatment facility. The singer revealed that she has limited memory of this time but is aware that she spent several months at the treatment center suffering from severe paranoia. After receiving a bipolar disorder diagnosis, she began taking a variety of drugs in the hope that one might help. She described the effects of the drugs on her, saying, “It was just that I was gone. There was no part of me that was there anymore.” After some time, she was discharged from the hospital and began working with a psychiatrist, who took her off all but two of her prescription drugs.
“He really guided me. 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,” she added. However sadly, Selena said is unlikely to be able to carry her own children due to the two medications she is now taking. Selena said that she was visiting a friend who was trying to start their own family when she realized the unpleasant truth and burst into tears in her car. “That’s a very big, big, present thing in my life. However I'm meant to have them, I will,” Selena added. Meanwhile, on November 4, Selena's upcoming documentary will be made available on Apple TV+. The documentary will follow the singer over the course of six years.