Lady Gaga advocated Thursday for better mental health care in the entertainment industry and opened up about her own "suicidal ideation and masochistic behaviour."
While accepting an award from the SAG-AFTRA Foundation in Beverly Hills, Gaga said: “Today, one in four people experience mental health crisis. I am one of those people.”
Urging the Hollywood crowd to do more to support mental health initiatives and to encourage dialogue, Gaga reflected on her early days in the music business.
"I did not have a mental health team or program when I began my career … and I only have one now because I had a mental health crisis and because frankly, because I can afford it,” she said.
“Having a mental health team has completely changed my life and conditions that I have that are not curable I have learned now are treatable and I can stop living in fear and begin living with bravery.”
Gaga explained that for so long she didn’t feel empowered to say “no.”
“I began to notice that I would stare off into space and black out for seconds or minutes. I would see flashes of things I was tormented by, experiences that were filed away in my brain,” she shared. "These were also symptoms of disassociation and PTSD.
“This 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 said she needed help earlier in her career.
“I needed someone to see not through me or see the star that I had become, but rather see the darkness inside that I was struggling with.”