Deepika Padukone

Interviewer: You're an actress, you're a film producer, but more importantly for us, a mental health advocate, and a successful one. And you have done a lot. And I was saying to your colleagues, triple L, foundation.

The live, love, and laugh. Yes. As you know, the very definition of health is a state of complete mental, physical, and social well-being. It's not merely an absence of disease or infirmity.

Yeah. But as you also know mental health is the most neglected. And people with mental health face severe human rights violations, stigma, and discrimination. But not only that, around 80% of them, people with mental health conditions, do not have access to mental health care they need.

So the problem is really serious, and for someone like Deepika to really take on this big cause is, for WHO, such a great opportunity- Thank you. And for me today, a great opportunity, too.

People like you like Deepika, will really change the tide, and I hope this moment will also increase the awareness, improve the awareness, and help people think about the enormous problem we're facing, especially with mental health, and decide to join your movement.

Thank you. So, having said this, and congratulating you for all your achievements and expressing my respect, for people maybe who may not be familiar with what you're doing, a very strong advocate of mental health, but what triggered that? Why? Deepika Padukone: Thank you for that lovely introduction, and good afternoon, everybody. Mental illness crept up on me when I least expected it.

I think most often, or at least in my case, it comes with absolutely no, warning signs. And I was going through a phase that, you know, the perception and the general understanding was that I was at a professional high. I'd had successful, you know, consecutive hits professionally, in the.

At the movies. I was in an amazing relationship. My parents and my sister have always been, you know, extremely supportive of everything that I've done in my life. And so everything that we think should be okay in our life was going more than, more than okay.

It was absolutely perfect. And I remember waking up just one morning, leading an absolutely normal, or what I thought was normal. It started with, I fell, I fainted.

I there was a complete blackout. I fainted. I hit my head. And I used to live alone at this time and luckily, the house help had arrived, and she saw me lying on the floor and you know, sort of revived me.

And then, you know, I gained consciousness. I sort of slept through the day, got an appointment with a general practitioner, went and saw him. He said, "Oh, it's nothing.

It's probably just exhaustion," or "Your BP just fluctuated." and that was it. That was, that was sort of the physical, symptom.

But what I was also experiencing was this sort of hollow, you know, sort of empty pit-ish feeling in my stomach. I would break into a sweat every now and then. I would just suddenly get into these sort of panic phases where I just felt like, you know, just.

I needed to just get out and you know, gasp for breath. And I would just cry. Like, out of nowhere, I would just break down and cry with.

There was. No one really had to say anything to me, or I didn't necessarily have to be in a specific place. I would just, you know, just. I could be in this room and suddenly just feel like I need to cry and express myself.

You know. And then there were days when I just didn't want to get out from bed. I would just want to sleep and not wake up, because to me, sleep felt like my escape, and I felt like I didn't have to deal with the reality of what I was experiencing. I didn't want to eat.

I didn't want to interact with anybody. I didn't want to. You know, I didn't want to go to work.

I'd lost, you know, motivation with absolutely everything. And fortunately, you know, my mother happened to be there a couple of months into this. My parents live in a different city, and they had come to visit.

And I was, I was sitting in their room, and they were packing up and ready to leave, and I had one of those moments where I was just watching her pack, and I suddenly just, I broke down. And she looked at me and she said, "What happened? Is everything okay?" And I said, I said, "Yes, everything okay, was okay," but clearly everything was not okay.

And you know, she asked me the routine questions about, is my. Is it my relationship? Is it something at work?

And I just kept saying no, and I didn't know what to. You know, what was that one thing? I couldn't point my finger at it.

And she immediately looked at me and said, "Deepika, I think you need professional help." and that's when we called Anna Chandy, who, you know, at the point was a family friend, but also a trained, psychologist. Mm-hmm. And but at that point, we felt like we wanted to share this with somebody who we could trust, someone who was not going to.

We were, we were concerned about what the media was going to say, and we didn't want to be seen outside a psychiatric clinic. So everything was hush. I remember calling up Anna.

She was in the middle of a personal crisis. She was traveling. And I called her and literally, you know, she asked me two questions, and she said, "I'm flying down to see you right away. You need professional help.

You need to see a psychiatrist." And you know, immediately, I think literally that same evening or the next day, she was on a flight. You know, she came to see me.

We then, you know, together went to another doctor who finally diagnosed it as clinical depression. And I remember having.

After struggle for so many months of having to go about the motions of doing everything, you know, going about my professional engagements, having to speak at events, having to perform scenes, having to engage with people, having to do all of those things, but actually not being present, I remember feeling a sense of relief that, wow, at least now we know what this is that I was experiencing.

Because I think the toughest part in the journey for me was not understanding what I was feeling or not understanding what I was experiencing, not being able to explain to people what it is that I'm feeling. So if people would say, "Hey, how have you been?" And I would have to lie and say, "I've been great.

I'm fine." Mm-hmm. When actually I was not feeling okay because I didn't have the strength and I didn't have the words to explain to somebody what I was experiencing. And so just the diagnosis in itself to me felt like a massive relief. At least now we knew what this was.

But I think this is where, you know, my journey to recovery began because I think accepting what Dr. Shyam Bhat told me was equally an important part of my journey to recovery. And I think what I see around me very often is two things. For example, when my mother said, "I think you need help," I could have easily rejected that and said, "No, Mom, that's crazy.

It, this doesn't make any sense. I'm not seeking professional help," A. B, the other situation could have been my mother could have completely discouraged me from seeking professional help.

So I think the two things that we managed to achieve here as a family is, one, the fact that somebody close to me within my family recognized the signs and symptoms, one. Two, encouraged me to seek help.

Three, that I was open to the idea of seeking help and I accepted the fact that, okay, if our body, is sort of susceptible to illness, so can the mind and you know.

And I think that's when I understood the importance of the mind and the body, and understanding that in the same way that we take care of our physical health, it's equally important for us to take care of our emotional health, our mental health. And then of course, that's how my journey to recovery began.

It is through during that time I realized that there was a lot of stigma, there was a lot of hush, there was a lot of not wanting to share with too many people what I was experiencing. And I think all of those experiences made me reflect on why we was behaving, including myself, why we were behaving a certain way. Why was I not telling somebody that, you know, I'm not feeling okay emotionally?

Why is it that I was seeing, you know, seeking professional help in, you know, privately? Why was I not confident enough to do this publicly and with people spotting me? That's okay. And it was all of those experiences that made me think and reflect and say, "One second."

I took a step back and I said, "Why have I and why have me, and why have we gone about this this way?"

And I think that's when I realized the stigma and the lack of awareness that's associated with mental health and mental illness, and that's what led me to come out publicly with my experience with anxiety and clinical depression, and subsequently setting up the Live, Love, Laugh Foundation because through that process I felt like, you know, through an interview or through the press, or through the foundation, if I was able to express the signs and symptoms that I experienced, and if there was even one person in this room who identified with those signs and symptoms and said, "You know what?

I'm going through the exact same thing, but I've not been able to put a finger on what it is that I'm going through." I wanted to make that journey that I had been through of the unknown, of not understanding what I was going through. I wanted to help somebody who's probably in that same situation, not understanding what they're going through, and probably help them understand,

Their signs and symptoms. And that was sort of the intention of going public with the illness, and then also subsequently setting up the Live, Love, Laugh Foundation. Interviewer: Thank you. I mean, that is so moving, and one of the souls actually who saved herself.

I think from your story many young people can learn. We're losing a lot, 800,000 a year, and the this is one of the largest killers of young people. Yes. It's serious, and that's why.

So what would be your advice to young people, what they should do for themselves and what they should do to help others? Deepika Padukone: I think, I think there's a lot of things that the youth can do, I think that we can do as individuals. I think to begin with just to become a little more aware as people.

So let me give this in two perspectives. One is, say, for someone like me who is experiencing, anxiety and depression. I think if I feel certain signs and symptoms, whether it's restlessness, whether it's you know, not being able to sleep, sleeping too much or lack of sleep, whether it's irregular, you know, your eating patterns, are you eating less or are you eating more?

Are you feeling a a sense of sadness or low, for a prolonged period of time? And I think it's very important to understand the difference between sadness and depression. Sadness is something that we all go through in our Mm-hmm.

For various reasons, death, you know, failure in an exam, heartbreak. I think, I think sadness is transient. Depression is not transient.

I think depression sort of lasts for a much longer period of time, and I think that's when you realize that, okay, this is, this is where I need to share. This is where I need to express. So for for someone who's experiencing that, I think it's important at that very moment to share with somebody that you're close to.

Mm-hmm. It could be a friend. It could be a colleague. It could be a family member.

It could be a sibling. But I think the first step really is to share with somebody around you how you're feeling. I think for people around, it's important to not just, sort of dismiss it as attention seeking.

It's important for us to be. Feel empathy towards the person who's, who's telling us something. Mm-hmm. I think we all have now a habit of asking each other how we're doing without really listening to whether we actually.

If I ask you how you're doing, am I actually interested in how you're doing? Mm-hmm. And would you be vulnerable enough to share with me how you're doing? So I think all of those things, I think in just in the way that we engage with people on a daily Mm-hmm.

Sharing with each other, understanding from each other, I think, you know. And then of course seeking help. So it's important for caregivers to encourage those feeling certain signs and symptoms to seek professional help.

There is a lot of stigma, especially in our country. Especially in India, there is a lot of stigma with regards to seeking professional help. Parents do not want to take their children to counselors or to you know, psychiatric treatment because they're concerned about what other family members will think.

They're concerned about what society will think. And I think, you know, I've come across situations where there are, there are, you know, people experiencing mental illness who want to seek help, but somewhere the family is not willing to allow them to do that. And sometimes it's the other way around, where the parents want their children to seek professional help and the child is resistant to that.

Mm-hmm. In my personal, my. In my personal experience, I think acceptance of medication. I think for me it was a combination.

Again, I'm not someone who can, you know, prescribe and say, "Yes, you should take medication." But I will say that in my personal experience, it was a combination of taking medication as well as lifestyle changes that have led to where I am today, but it is also a constant taking care of myself. It is an illness that can come back.

Mm-hmm. So I have to take care of myself on a daily basis. The amount I sleep, what I eat, exercise, mindfulness, all of those things are things that I still have to, do on a regular basis, to ensure that I don't go back, into that dark world and dark space, again. Interviewer: Thank you. So together we hope to make a difference.

Namaste. Namaste. Thank you.