Actress Deepika Padukone may have garnered a lot of fame, love, and attention both within India and internationally, but hard as it is to accept, the beautiful actress once battled with depression. Deepika had even appeared on a TV show to address the issue of depression and to remove the social stigma around it. She subsequently started ‘The Live Love Laugh’ foundation to help others who are suffering from depression.
The actress recently revealed that she still battles with the mental illness. While at an event, the actress stated, "I don't think I can say that I'm completely over it (depression). There is always a fear at the back of my mind that I might have a relapse because it has been such a bad experience for me."
When asked that if opening about her illness had cost her movie roles, she stated, "Maybe there are people who haven't offered me films because they think I was depressed and I can't act. Maybe, I don't know. I'm in a good space because I can choose the movies that I want to act in, but I don't think everyone has that luxury of where they want to work or when they want to work."
She also added that the best way to detatch stigma associated with depression would be to introduce it as a curriculum in schools. “A large part of the stigma comes from the fact that we (just) talk about physical education in schools. I had physical education in my school, but we didn’t have anything to talk about mental health. It’s not a part of the curriculum. If we included that in the curriculum and introduced the idea or the importance of mental health at school level, there will be no stigma,” she added.
Talking about her decision of speaking about her illness in public, the actress stated, “The idea really was to change the way people in India and the world see mental illness.”
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