2. Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga has made herself known for always speaking about trauma and mental health conditions. In an interview with Oprah for Elle in 2019, she shared her struggle with fibromyalgia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Lady Gaga told her traumatic story about being sexually assaulted several times in her past (she was 19 years old when it happened) and she didn’t cope with her subsequent PTSD until feeling intense physical pain.
“I all of a sudden became a star and was traveling the world going from hotel room to garage to limo to stage, and I never dealt with it, and then all of a sudden I started to experience this incredible intense pain throughout my entire body that mimicked the illness I felt after I was raped,” Gaga told Oprah.
She also shared with Oprah experiencing a psychotic break, which she treated with antipsychotic olanzapine. Antipsychotics are usually prescribed to treat mental conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, but they can also be administrated in treating anxiety and PTSD, the latter that triggered Gaga’s fibromyalgia.
“I once believed that there was no way back from my trauma,” said Gaga. “I was in physical, mental, and emotional pain. And medicine works, but you need medicine with the therapy for it to really work because there’s a part that you have to do yourself.”
Moreover, she encourages people who struggle with mental health conditions to treat themselves and let go of the stigma that surrounds depression and antidepressants.
“Medicine really helped me. A lot of people are afraid of medicine for their brains to help them. I really want to erase the stigma around this,” Gaga reportedly said.
