In the entertainment industry, many artists and celebrities started when they were still young, probably naive about how the industry worked at the time. Growing up barely making ends meet in Grand Prairie, Texas, Selena Gomez managed to break through the industry with the help of the Disney Channel.
Now, she is one of the biggest and most influential pop stars in the world. Not only does she have albums that define an entire generation, but she has also given significant contributions to shaping how people should view mental illnesses.
In a new Rolling Stone article, Gomez painstakingly detailed her struggle living with a mental disorder, which she also talks about in her now-released documentary of hers: "Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me," out on Netflix and Apple TV.
Unbeknownst to many, Gomez had been clinically diagnosed with Bipolar disorder. She revealed this candidly in an Instagram Live with her dear friend Miley Cyrus in 2020.
During the raw and barefooted interview with the publication, Gomez revealed that she had been to four treatment centers in the past few years.
"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 noted.
Living with lupus, Gomez's physical and mental health has taken a toll on her body and somehow on her career too. She confessed in the interview that there were times when she had to break down in the middle of press tours, not knowing what was happening after being struck with a sudden bout of intense sadness.
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Elsewhere in the interview, Gomez admitted that she had been thinking of taking her own life, apparently spending a few years contemplating it.
I thought the world would be better if I wasn't there," the singer ominously recalls.
Specifically, in 2018, Gomez recalled that she was hearing voices and was eventually admitted to a treatment facility after a devastating episode of psychosis. To date, the singer says that she does not have a complete recollection of what happened, but it was clear to her that she spent several months in paranoia.
Apart from this, Gomez thinks that her distress stemmed from a couple of things - her struggle to find her "authentic artistic voice," wiping away the "Disney polish," and aging along with her fans.
"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 opened up.
Gomez, in the most authentic way possible, is willing to share her story of recovery with the world with her new documentary, which she revealed that she almost didn't sign off.
"I'm just so nervous," she said. "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 bipolar disorder brave revelation has been praised for shedding light on her mental illness, elevating the discourse on the often-shied-away topic in media.
