Celebrities Who Struggle With Depression

MARIE OSMOND
Depression doesn’t age discriminate, and some people don’t experience it until later in life. Such is the case with Marie Osmond, America’s beloved little sister, who at 40 was faced with a crippling case of post-partum depression that followed the birth of her seventh child. In the midst of launching a talk show with her brother and used to calling the shots, Osmond suddenly found herself collapsed in a puddle of tears on her kitchen floor, unable to cope. “This couldn’t be me, collapsing in hysteria, not even recognizing my own wails,” Osmond wrote in her 2008 book, “Behind the Smile: My Journey Out of Postpartum Depression.” “This was not me, shaken to the core, sliding into a despair of the deepest kind.” When antidepressants didn’t work, Osmond found her way out of the darkness with a combination of acupuncture, diet and hormone treatments. “This is a physical thing that is fixable,” Osmond says. “I know: I’m a survivor. Believe me, there was no way I thought I could survive. There are answers out there that need to be found.”

DREW CAREY
Comedian turned “The Price Is Right” host has been open about his depression battles for years, revealing in 2007 that it had gotten so bad in the past that he had attempted suicide twice before his late 20s. Because of his day job, he found it difficult to ask for help. “Living in Hollywood…you can feel like you’re the only one,” he says. “You hold it in and you don’t let it go and you don’t try to find help because you think, ‘Oh man, if I tell anybody, I’m going to seem like I’m weak. I won’t get a movie deal!’” He credits self-belief and setting goals with helping him to overcome it, and he read every self-help book he got his hands on. “I read that stuff all the time,” says Carey. “I am always coming out bigger, better, stronger and happier.”

CATHERINE ZETA-JONES
Few people, famous or otherwise, have been more open about their struggles with bipolar disorder than the Oscar-winning “Chicago” actress. While she has been privately coping with her bipolar II disorder for most of her life, symptoms of the disorder flared up following her husband Michael Douglas’ cancer diagnosis in 2010, and she decided to go public. “It wasn’t something I wanted to shout from the rooftops,” the actress, who regularly seeks treatment to stay on top of her disorder, told the Telegraph in 2013. “But when it did come to light, I know I’m not the only person who suffers with it or has to deal with it on a day-to-day basis. So if I’ve helped anybody by discussing bipolar or depression, that’s great.”

LADY GAGA
Moved by her fans’ struggles with identity, depression and suicide, the pop star came forward with her own struggles with depression. “I’ve suffered through depression and anxiety my entire life,” Gaga told Billboard in early 2015. “I still suffer with it every single day.” As a way to help her fans and keep herself on point, the singer started the Born This Way Foundation to focus on the type of youth mental health and emotional intelligence issues that she once struggled with and some of her fans still do. “As I began to care for them and to see myself in them, I felt I had to do something that would remind kids they’re not alone,” says Gaga. “When they feel isolated, that’s when it leads to suicide.”

JK ROWLING
Long before creating the most beloved fictional world of modern times, Rowling was a poor, single mother living in Scotland and struggling with depression. “Clinical depression is a terrible place to be,” the Harry Potter creator told Oprah in 2010. “[While] I had tendencies toward depression from quite young, it became really acute when I was 23 to 28. It is that absence of feeling.” Inspired by her newborn daughter and an idea for a series of books, she pulled herself out of a spiral that nearly engulfed her. “I was still alive. I still had a daughter whom I adored. And I had an old typewriter and a big idea, and so rock-bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt by life,” Rowling told graduates at Harvard’s commencement in 2008. “It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all.”