5 Celebs Who Have Spoken Out About How Therapy Has Improved Their Lives

It may have taken years, but mental health is finally getting the recognition it deserves. Once something that was shrouded in shame, more and more people are talking about their mental and emotional issues and how therapy has saved them in more ways than one. Celebrities are also becoming more candid about their mental health and the steps they've taken to get back on track.

"I've noticed a positive trend in recent years with more celebrities speaking openly about their personal struggles with mental health," BACP registered therapist Lorraine Collins told Hello Magazine. "This highlights the universal impact of mental health and helps to break down the stigma surrounding it ... With their wide reach and influence, celebrities have the power to spread awareness and educate the public on this crucial topic. This shift in perspective challenges the misconception that mental health only affects a specific group of individuals."

Anyone can find themselves in the middle of a short-lived mental health crisis or be diagnosed with a disorder that needs life-long treatment. Life is hard enough as it is, and managing a mental health issue with therapy is always the best decision anyone can make for themselves. If you're still not feeling comfortable with the idea of sitting down with a professional and unpacking the mental agony that you haven't been able to tackle on your own, then let some very well-known celebrities inspire you to put your mental health first.

Gwyneth Paltrow may be an Academy Award-winning actress and the brains behind the wellness brand Goop, but she also struggled with postpartum depression after the birth of her second child, Moses. "I felt like a zombie," Paltrow told Good Housekeeping in 2011. "I couldn't access my heart. I couldn't access my emotions. I couldn't connect. It was terrible. It was the exact opposite of what had happened when Apple was born ... I couldn't believe it wasn't the same [after Moses was born]. I just thought it meant I was a terrible mother and a terrible person."

Of course, Paltrow wasn't a terrible mother, but rather one of the thousands of people who experience postpartum depression (PPD). According to a 2024 study published in StatPearls, one in seven mothers experience PPD within the first 12 months of having a child. While that may not seem like a huge number, considering a whopping 50% of PPD cases go undiagnosed due to fear of judgment, that's quite a large percentage.

"The hardest part for me was acknowledging the problem," Paltrow told the magazine. "I thought postpartum depression meant you were sobbing every single day and incapable of looking after a child. But there are different shades of it and depths of it, which is why I think it's so important for women to talk about. It was a trying time. I felt like a failure." But thanks to therapy, Paltrow was able to get to the other side.

Looking at Kerry Washington, it's easy to assume she has it all. The talented actress is a mother of two, but she's also a political activist who, at the time of writing, is out there speaking at events on behalf of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. But back in her college days, Washington struggled with disordered eating.

"I used food as a way to cope. It was my best friend," Washington told Essence in 2020, adding that she binged on food that she hid in her dorm room. "I'd eat anything and everything ... sometimes until I passed out. But then, because I had this personality that was driven toward perfectionism, I would tell people I was at the library, but instead go to the gym and exercise for hours and hours and hours. Keeping my behavior a secret was painful and isolating. There was a lot of guilt and a lot of shame."

Although Washington believed she was keeping this behavior a secret, people noticed that something was wrong. After a dance teacher told Washington she was concerned and aware that something about her behavior wasn't right, Washington started working with a therapist and has been ever since, telling Essence that therapy has taught her how to love not just her body, but her whole person. "Therapy helped me realize that maybe it's okay for me to communicate my feelings ... Instead of literally stuffing them down with food, maybe it's okay for me to express myself."

When it comes to celebrities being transparent and open about their mental health struggles, no one has been quite as outspoken as Selena Gomez. What's so great about Gomez is that she was tackling these topics far before many of her fellow celebrities, not just to make her fans who might be experiencing similar mental health disorders feel less alone, but to normalize the conversation.

In April 2017, Gomez spoke to Vogue about the panic attacks and anxiety disorder that was plaguing her. "I was depressed, anxious. I started to have panic attacks right before getting on stage, or right after leaving the stage," said Gomez, who joined group therapy to learn how to manage her symptoms. "You have no idea how incredible it felt to just be with six girls," said Gomez. "Real people who couldn't give two sh**s about who I was, who were fighting for their lives. It was one of the hardest things I've done, but it was the best thing I've done."

After the group therapy, Gomez moved on to Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which is used for a variety of disorders, including depression and borderline personality disorder. She was, at least back in 2017, going five days a week to these sessions. "DBT has completely changed my life," Gomez told Vogue. "I wish more people would talk about therapy."

The moment Lena Dunham popped onto the scene with the HBO series "Girls," she was 100% herself. She didn't censor herself or try to fit into what society had carved out for her as a 20-something woman in New York City, and whenever she had a mental or medical setback, everyone was going to hear about it. One of the most problematic issues for Dunham was crippling anxiety that landed her in therapy for the first time at the age of nine years old.

In 2015, Dunham interviewed herself for Stylist about everything and anything, one aspect of which happened to be therapy and the effect it had on her. "My therapist actually said something really interesting to me that I think about a lot," Dunham told Stylist when talking about the never-ending boredom she was enduring after a breakup. "It made me realize that me being bored was really a substitute for me not wanting to experience all those uncomfortable emotions, and it really cracked something for me. Having a therapist has taught me to be less cruel to myself. It's not like therapy has made me the world's sanest person; it just made me slightly less insane."

While it's very likely that Michelle Obama has parts of her life that she keeps private, when it comes to things that matter and make her fellow Americans feel less alone, she's an open book. Not only is Obama one of a handful of celebs who've discussed their miscarriages, something she shared in her 2018 memoir, "Becoming," but in the same book she also talked about how therapy improved her life, as well as her relationship with Barack.

In her 2020 Netflix documentary, "Becoming," Obama shared the lasting impact therapy had on her. "Counseling helped me to look at, 'How do I take control of my own happiness within our marriage?' But it's hard, it's hard. It is hard blending two lives together," said Obama. "One of the things I learned that helped me, and I think helped our marriage was that my happiness is not dependent on him making me happy."

In 2018, before the release of "Becoming," Obama said to the host of "Good Morning America," Robin Roberts, "I know too many young couples who struggle and think that somehow there's something wrong with them. And I want them to know that Michelle and Barack Obama, who have a phenomenal marriage and who love each other, we work on our marriage. And we get help with our marriage when we need it."