Selena Gomez felt "shame and guilt" amid her mental health battle.
The ‘Lose You To Love Me’ hitmaker opened up earlier this year about her struggle with bipolar, and has now said she’s "extremely passionate" about supporting others going through similar experiences, as well as helping to end the stigma around substance abuse.
Selena spoke as she was joined by chef Antonia Lofaso for an episode of her new HBO Max show, ‘Selena + Chef’, which sees her cook a meal in her kitchen with the help of a different chef each episode.
As part of the premise of the show, the 28-year-old singer allows each of her guest chefs to pick a charity that the programme will donate $10,000 to, and Antonia chose Beit T’Shuvah, which is a drug and rehab facility in Los Angeles.
Speaking about the facility, Antonia said: "I’ve had family members with substance abuse who’ve basically been given back to me through rehabilitation and I know that there’s always an opportunity for people to find their way back home when there’s help that’s readily available to them."
And Selena responded: "I also have bipolar [disorder], so I deal with a lot of mental health issues and some of my family members are also addicts, so, you know, it’s something that I’m extremely passionate about as well. I think that there is a lot of shame and guilt in it and then there’s also this pressure of, you know, wanting to feel like you’re a part of the crowd if you do this and do that.
"I’m very grateful that I now know that’s something you do and people can check it out."
Meanwhile, the ‘Wolves’ singer spoke about her bipolar diagnosis in May, when she said she discovered her disorder in 2018 after visiting McLean Hospital, one of the best mental health institutions in the United States.
She said: "I went to one of the best mental hospitals in America, McLean’s Hospital, and I discussed that after years of going through a lot of different things, I realised that I was bipolar.
"When I have more information, it actually helps me, it doesn’t scare me once I know it … When I finally said what I was going to say, I wanted to know everything about it and it took the fear away.
"When I was younger, I was scared of thunderstorms and my mom bought me all these books on thunderstorms and she was like, ‘The more you educate yourself on this, the more that you’re not going to be afraid.’ It completely worked. That’s something that helps me big time."