Artistes need help with mental health, says Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga has called for more to be done in supporting artistes with mental health conditions. The 32-year-old singer opened up about her own “mental health crisis” as she accepted a patron award at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s Patron of the Artists Awards last Thursday, and said she wishes there was a better system in place that could help her and other artistes feel “empowered”.
She said: “I began to notice that I would stare off into space and black out for seconds or minutes. I would see flashes of things I was tormented by, experiences that were filed away in my brain with ‘I’ll deal with you later’ for many years because my brain was protecting me, as science teaches us. These were also symptoms of disassociation and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), and I did not have a team that included mental-health support. “[My struggles] later morphed into physical chronic pain, fibromyalgia, panic attacks, acute trauma responses, and debilitating mental spirals that have included suicidal ideation and masochistic behaviour.” The Million Reasons hitmaker suggested that SAG-AFTRA partner with her own Born This Way foundation to implement mental-health programmes for union members. She added: “I wish there had been a system in place to protect and guide me, a system in place to empower me to say no to things I felt I had to do, a system in place to empower me to stay away from toxic work environments or working with people who were of seriously questionable character. There were days that I struggled or couldn’t make it to work, and I don’t want that for other artistes or anyone.”