Selena Gomez has said she felt “a huge weight” lifted after she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
The singer and actress told Elle she has faced a “struggle” with depression and anxiety.
She revealed last year that she had been diagnosed with bipolar.
“My lupus, my kidney transplant, chemotherapy, having a mental illness, going through very public heartbreaks – these were all things that honestly should have taken me down,” she told the magazine.
“Every time I went through something, I was like, ‘What else? What else am I going to have to deal with?”
Gomez (29) said that deciding to help others is “really what kept me going”.
“There could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough, and would have done something to hurt myself.”
Discussing her bipolar diagnosis, she added: “I felt a huge weight lifted off me when I found out.
“I could take a deep breath and go, ‘OK, that explains so much’.”
Gomez said using social media less and not personally running her accounts has helped improve her mindset.
“I don’t have it on my phone, so there’s no temptation,” she said.
“I suddenly had to learn how to be with myself. That was annoying, because in the past, I could spend hours looking at other people’s lives.
“I would find myself down nearly two years in someone’s feed, and then I’d realise, ‘I don’t even know this person!’
“Now I get information the proper way. When my friends have something to talk about, they call me and say, ‘Oh, I did this’. They don’t say, ‘Wait, did you see my post?'”
