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Lady Gaga has opened up about her ongoing struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Speaking at a shelter for homeless LGBT youth in New York City’s Harlem neighbourhood, the pop icon decided to reveal her PTSD diagnosis in solidarity with young people going through difficulties, especially mental health disorders.
“My own trauma in my life has helped me to understand the trauma of others,” she said at the event where she led a brief meditation exercise, according to the US Today show.
“I don’t have the same kind of issues that you have,” she said, “but I have a mental illness and I struggle with that every day so I need my mantra to help keep me relaxed.”
Speaking to Today after the event, she continued “I told the kids today that I suffer from a mental illness. I suffer from PTSD. I’ve never told anyone that before, so here we are. But the kindness that’s been shown to me by doctors—as well as my family and my friends—it’s really saved my life.”
After the event, she tweeted “Today I shared one my deepest secrets [with] the world. Secrets keep you sick [with] shame. #sharekindness”.
In 2014 Gaga revealed during an interview on The Howard Stern Show that she’d been raped when she was 19 years old, and had suppressed the trauma from the event until a few years later.
“It didn’t affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later. It hit me so hard,” she said. “I was so traumatised by it that I was like, ‘Just keep going … “It took me a long time to feel strong about it.”
The Grammy Award-winner’s new album Joanne is her most personal and raw yet, including emotional heartbreak ballad Million Reasons, which is believed to be about her July break-up from fiancé Taylor Kinney, who she was with for five years.
She also became emotional in a recent television interview in which she discussed the isolation and loneliness that’s been the price she paid for fame.
