Mayim Bialik has urged people not to give up seeking help for mental health problems.
The ‘Big Bang Theory’ actress has spoken candidly about her previous battle with depression, and has highlighted the importance of getting help and pursuing different paths, even if one kind of treatment doesn’t seem to be working.
Mayim made the comments in a video – which was obtained by People magazine – as part of the Child Mind Institute’s #MyYoungerSelf campaign, in which several celebrities share messages with their younger selves in the hope to end the stigma attached to mental health and learning disorders.
The 42-year-old actress said: "I think what I would have liked to tell my younger self about my mental health is that there are answers. For me, some of those answers I had to wait years to find and I needed to get different help, which ended up being really the right kind of help.
"But I had this notion when I was younger that if something didn’t work once, or if a therapist didn’t work, or if a medication didn’t work, that nothing would ever work. I wish I could have told my younger self that something will work – it’s just going to take sometimes more research, sometimes more referrals, and really figuring things out like your life depends on it. Because for me, it did."
The Child Mind Institute’s campaign features over 30 actors, Olympians, authors, comedians, and other influencers in the hopes of showing children and adolescents who struggle that there is a bright future ahead if they open up and ask for help.
For Mayim, speaking out about her battle with depression when she was younger comes after she revealed in 2015 that she had received hate comments on the Internet after visiting Israel.
The star – who is Jewish and was visiting a friend in the Israel Defence Forces – shared: "I’ve gotten a lot of negative attention for visiting Israel.
"That’s what’s amazing … simply by going to Israel this summer and saying nothing more than, ‘I’ve gone to Israel,’ I got the same amount of hatred and threats and anti-Semitism for actually making a statement trying to support people whether I like it or not are serving in an army."
Mayim Bialik urges people to seek help for mental health
