5 Times Lady Gaga Was Open And Honest About Her Mental Health Struggles

Lady Gaga built her pop empire on spectacle. From the moment she erupted onto the scene — in hyperbolic costuming and platinum wigs as she promoted her infectious beats — it was as if she knew she was born for hyperstardom all along.

Her debut single, "Just Dance," reset the dial for mainstream pop. Now, almost two decades later, she has seven genre-fluid solo albums, multiple Grammy wins, and a handful of acting accolades; she has nothing left to prove except how long she can make her starpower last. But there's a cost to reaching mythically talented proportions whilst still being human.

As her career evolved, she shared more of the truth. She spoke of the assault she endured as a teenager at the hands of a music producer, of the PTSD that followed, and the drastic physical toll it took on her body. In 2017, she was forced to cancel her world tour because of fibromyalgia — a condition that inflicts excruciating pain. According to the Mayo Clinic, it "amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain and spinal cord process painful and nonpainful signals." In many ways, it is the body mirroring a mind that has been in overdrive for too long.

Yet, despite her mental health struggles, she remains resilient. A survivor who is open about living with chronic illness, she's spoken about her pain, sung through it, and in so doing, been a light for others suffering to look to. Her spectacle remains, but it no longer obscures.

Behind Lady Gaga's electrifying performances and most over-the-top outfits lies an artist bleeding for her music. Like every great artist, she's had to confront the innermost parts of herself — a creative process unearthed in her documentary, "Lady Gaga: Five Foot Two." The film followed the singer as she poured herself into making her fifth, country-inspired studio album, "Joanne," and prepared for her career-defining Super Bowl Halftime Show. The thunderous applause, however, could not drown out the emotional wounds she was still grappling with.

The shadow of her split from former fiancé Taylor Kinney had seen fame morph into a monster of its own. Heartbreak became even harder to bear, and she revealed she had to face emotions she had long avoided. "I had to go into the deepest pain in my life," she admitted, "I had to go into that part of myself that you don't want to face."

The movie also saw Gaga in the studio with Mark Ronson. At one point, she took a break from recording "Million Reasons," a song that would become a defining track of "Joanne," and reflected on the intersection between her art and her mental health: "You have to go to that broken place of your heart to write songs," comparing the relentlessly invasive process of songwriting to open heart surgery.

When Lady Gaga accepted the SAG-AFTRA Foundation Patron of the Artists Award in 2018, she used her moment as a call to arms. The honor recognized her contribution to the arts, but rather than bask in praise, she turned the stage into a platform to advocate for mental health reform in the entertainment industry — a business that all too often leaves artists to suffer in silence.

She spoke of the warning signs her mind sent her, saying, "I began to notice that I would stare off into space and black out for seconds or minutes." Fragments of past trauma, long locked away and buried under the demands of fame, began to claw their way with force back into her consciousness — symptoms of PTSD and dissociation that she didn't yet have the support to navigate. Over time, she said, her struggles "later morphed into physical chronic pain, fibromyalgia, panic attacks, acute trauma responses, and debilitating mental spirals that have included suicidal ideation and masochistic behaviour."

Gaga's experiences prompted her to call for change, urging SAG-AFTRA to partner with her Born This Way Foundation (the nonprofit she set up with her mother to support the mental wellbeing of young people) so they could create mental health resources for artists. Hoping to build a future where young performers aren't left to fend for themselves in toxic work environments, she admitted: "I wish there had been a system in place to protect and guide me."

By 2020, the world was hurting, and Lady Gaga was hurting with it. Sitting down with Oprah for the 2020 Vision Tour, she spoke about the physical manifestations that occur when unprocessed trauma burrows into the body. At 19 years old, she was repeatedly assaulted, left to navigate the aftermath alone. "I did not have a therapist. I did not have a psychiatrist. I did not have a doctor to help me through it." Instead, she became famous. A blur of hotels, limos, and stages kept her moving too fast to feel anything.

Eventually, her body forced her to slow down. The link between mental trauma and physical collapse caught up with her in the most brutal way — fibromyalgia. Her nervous system shut down completely, leaving parts of her body tingling and numb. She recalled being assessed by medical professionals trying to get her to move, but when a psychiatrist arrived, she initially resisted, saying, "Can you give me a real doctor?"

She revealed the unconventional treatments that have helped her, including a psychosis drug and therapy to improve her life. Through her Born This Way Foundation, she's fighting for mental health education, telling Oprah, "I want mental health to be its own class." As she declared, "Over the next decade and maybe longer, I'm going to get the smartest scientists, doctors, psychiatrists, mathematicians, researchers, and professors in the same room together. And we are going to solve this mental health crisis."

After the stripped-down confessional album "Joanne," her next album, "Chromatica," was its counterpoint. She transformed her pain into something worth moving to. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Lady Gaga described the album as a watershed moment, believing it marked: "the beginning of my journey to healing, and what I would hope would be an inspiration for people that are in need of healing through happiness, through dance."

Gaga had stopped running from herself or her struggles. Instead, she was practicing what she dubbed as radical acceptance, adding: "I know that I have mental issues; I know that they can sometimes render me nonfunctional as a human. But I radically accept that this is real."

But "Chromatica" was never intended as personal catharsis alone. Gaga delivered this as a lifeline for others suffering, so that they would know they weren't broken. She left fans with a touching message on mental health: "If you're listening to this album and you're suffering in any type of way, just know that that suffering within itself is a sign of your humanity."

So, who is Lady Gaga when the stage lights dim? In a New York Times interview marking the release of her seventh studio album, "Mayhem," she admitted that her own psychological unraveling forced her to ask the same question. Her psychosis had left her ashamed and detached. "I was not deeply in touch with reality for a while," she said, describing the disorienting grip of her diagnosis. To regain control, she had to reconcile the two versions of herself: the persona and the person. She decided, "I had to figure out how to integrate myself fully with my stage persona."

But even after the worst had passed, happiness still felt out of reach. It took her fiancé, Michael Polansky, who finally held up a mirror to the disconnect she hadn't yet addressed. Early in their relationship, he confronted the sadness she carried, telling her, "I know you could be a lot happier than you are." He was right, and the chaos that once felt like her fuel had now burned itself out. As she calmly concluded, "I used to like more chaos, just living life on the edge constantly. I'm now proud to be much more boring."