Cara Delevingne Opens Up About Fighting Depression: "I Wanted the World to Swallow Me Up"
The actress was first diagnosed at age 15.
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Cara Delevingne seems to have it all—career, brains, beauty, some serious talent—but the actress served it to us straight in a recent interview, admitting that she's struggled with depression since her early teens.
"I think I pushed myself so far that I got to the point where I had a mental breakdown. I got to the point where I went a bit mad. I was completely suicidal, I didn't want to live any more," she said in a Q&A with Rupert Everett. "I thought that I was completely alone. I also realized how lucky I was, and what a wonderful family and wonderful friends I had, but that didn't matter. I wanted the world to swallow me up."
And after her newfound success, Delevingne realized those feelings weren't just going to go away. "In our culture we are told that if we are beautiful, if we are skinny, if we are successful, famous, if we fit in, if everyone loves us, that we'll be happy. But that's not entirely true," she said.
Delevingne went on to detail her experience with anti-depressants and therapy, and credits yoga and learning how to say "no" as being part of her recovery.
She's not the only one to make this type of revelation recently. Sarah Silverman opened up this week about her decades-long battle with depression: "Like my mom always said, you just have to brave enough to exist through it," she said.
Here's hoping that as celebrities bravely share their stories, a little bit of the stigma falls away. Because as anyone suffering through it knows, depression is bad enough without shame layered on top.
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Samantha Leal is the Deputy Editor at Well+Good, where she spends most of her day thinking of new ideas across platforms, bringing on new writers, overseeing the day-to-day of the website, and working with the awesome team to produce the best stories and packages. Before W+G, she was the Senior Web Editor for Marie Claire and the Deputy Editor for Latina.com, with bylines all over the internet. Graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University with a minor in African history, she’s written everything from travel guides to political op-eds to wine explainers (currently enrolled in the WSET program) to celebrity profiles. Find her online pretty much everywhere @samanthajoleal.