Selena Gomez reveals severe toll of her mental illness and lupus struggles while covering Elle

Selena Gomez reveals severe toll of her mental illness and lupus struggles, admitting there ‘could have been a time when I would have hurt myself’ as she covers Elle’s first-ever Latinx issue

• The 29-year-old appears on the cover of Elle’s September issue, which focuses on the Latinx community, and sees the singer taking on the role of guest editor 
• In an interview with the publication, Selena discussed the toll that her physical and mental illnesses have taken on her, as well as her ‘very public heartbreaks’ 
• Selena revealed in 2015 that she had been diagnosed with lupus and had gone through chemo to treat it, and in 2017 she had to undergo a kidney transplant
• She battled anxiety, depression and panic attacks as a result of her lupus and in 2016 she announced she was ‘taking some time off’ to focus on mental health
• The singer and actress was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2018 and says the news came as a relief to her because it ‘explained so much’ about her struggles  
• Speaking to Elle, she confessed that all of those struggles, combined with her very public breakups ‘should have taken her down’  
• Selena’s on-again-off-again relationship with Justin Bieber was the source of much public interest, as was her romance with singer The Weeknd

By Charlie Lankston For Dailymail.com

Published: 15:02 BST, 19 August 2021 | Updated: 15:10 BST, 19 August 2021

Selena Gomez has laid bare the severe toll that her mental health struggles and lupus battle took on her, admitting that her illnesses and past public heartbreaks ‘honestly should have taken me down’. 

The 29-year-old, who revealed in 2015 that she had been diagnosed with lupus – for which she had to undergo chemotherapy and a kidney transplant – opened up about her mental illness in a new interview for Elle’s first-ever Latinx issue, on which she appears as the cover star. 

Looking back on her physical and mental diagnoses, the singer seemed to voice surprise that she had manage to overcome everything that she’s had to face, saying: ‘My lupus, my kidney transplant, chemotherapy, having a mental illness, going through very public heartbreaks — these were all things that honestly should have taken me down.’

Selena first opened up about her mental health struggles in 2016, when she announced that she was taking a break from work in order to deal with the anxiety, depression, and panic attacks that she had been suffering from as a result of her lupus.  

Speaking out: Selena Gomez has opened up about the severe toll that her mental health struggles and lupus diagnosis had on her, while starring in a cover shoot for Elle 

Star power: The 29-year-old covers and guest edits the publication’s first-ever Latinx issue, in which she discusses the steps she took to protect her mental health 

Battle: Selena confessed that dealing with her lupus – which required chemotherapy and a kidney transplant – as well as her bipolar disorder ‘should have taken her down’ 

In 2018, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, news that she says came as something of a relief, because it helped to ‘explain so much’ about everything she had been through in the years prior. 

‘I felt a huge weight lifted off me when I found out,’ she told Elle. ‘I could take a deep breath and go, “Okay, that explains so much.”‘    

But while Selena has since found ways to protect her mental health – including deleting all social media apps from her phone – she admits there was a darker time when she felt unable to cope with all of her struggles. 

‘Every time I went through something, I was like, “What else? What else am I going to have to deal with?”‘ she recalled, adding: ‘There could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough, and would have done something to hurt myself.’   

Fighter: Although she feels stronger today, she admitted that ‘there could have been a time when I wasn’t strong enough, and would have done something to hurt myself’

Hollywood glamor: The singer is the spitting image of Marilyn Monroe in several of the images from her Elle shoot 

At home: Speaking about her 2018 bipolar disorder diagnosis, Selena said that it came as a relief, because it ‘explained so much’ about what she had been going through 

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