Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA FoundationLady Gaga, honored Thursday night at the SAG-AFTRA Foundation’s 3rd annual Patron of the Artists Awards, gave a speech about mental health awareness, calling for real change in the treatment of and the stigma surrounding the disease.
“Today, one in four people experience a mental health crisis. I am one of those people,” she said, according to the Hollywood Reporter‘s official transcript. “…Each year, we lose more than 800,000 mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, teachers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, coaches, veterans, doctors, nurses, and artists to suicide.”
Gaga urged the SAG-AFTRA Foundation to expand their programs for mental health care, later offering to put her money where her mouth is and shell out a donation to partner with them.
She then shared very personal details of her own mental health crisis.
“I did not have a mental health team or program when I began my career in Hollywood,” 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.”
Through treatment, Gaga found that she suffered from 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 behavior,” she admitted. “I’m telling you this because for me, it was too late. I needed help earlier. I needed mental health care … if there was preventative mental health care accessible to me earlier, I believe it would not have gotten as bad as it did.”
Gaga closed by thanking everyone for their time and help, saying, “Let’s create a more nuanced infrastructure. And let’s f****** change the world.”
Copyright © 2018, ABC Radio. All rights reserved.
