Here’s why Katy Perry’s live-stream therapy session matters

During a live-stream therapy session, Katy Perry opened up about having suicidal thoughts. Her honesty could help reduce the stigma around mental health.

Katy Perry has been bravely opening up about her mental health while she promotes her latest album Witness. And she just became a huge role model to young fans who struggle with their own mental health in the process.

During a 96-hour live-stream of her life that she did this weekend, Perry filmed a therapy session with The Therapist’s Dr. Siri Sat Nam Singh, where she opened about her past struggles with alcohol and having suicidal thoughts.

“I wrote a song about it,” she said in the live-stream of having suicidal thoughts. “I feel ashamed that I would have those thoughts, feel that low and that depressed.”

Speaking with the Today show’s Natalie Morales, Perry added that she’s had “very low thoughts” and “It’s not just been one time that I felt really low. I have my own addictions that I struggle with, whether that’s love or substance or things like that, and it’s up and down … even attention, I get so much attention and that can become an addiction.”

This isn’t the first time Perry’s opened up about therapy and mental health. She previously said that she went to therapy following her divorce from Russell Brand, where she learned to focus on herself more rather than worrying about others.

“It’s changed my life,” Perry said of going to therapy to Vogue back in April. “When I am in the room I am just Katheryn Hudson, which is amazing because people in my position hear yes too much, and it kills them or makes them completely disconnected from reality – and I don’t want that.”

So why did Perry choose to open up about her mental health? Perry explained that she has a hard time connecting Katy Perry to the real Katheryn Hudson. She wanted her fans to see the real her – including her therapy session.

This is huge. For a big pop star like Perry to not only talk about therapy but to actually show what a therapy session looks like could go a long way in normalizing therapy. There’s a huge stigma surrounding mental health. According to an organization called Time to Change, which works to eliminate mental health discrimination, “Nine out of 10 people with mental health problems experience stigma and discrimination” and “Nearly three in four young people fear the reactions of friends when they talk about their mental health problems.”

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Because of the stigma surrounding mental health, people (especially young people) are less likely to talk about it or get help when they need it. But a huge pop star like Perry proudly saying “Yes I struggle and I get help and that’s OK” could go such a long way in reducing the stigma around mental health for her younger fans.