She was one of the first in Bollywood to break the ice on mental health. On World Mental Health Day, here's a throwback to 2017 when Deepika Padukone spoke about coming to terms with her own bout of depression at the World Economic Forum.
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00:00We don't want to be the most depressed, we don't want to be the country with the highest suicide rate in the world.
00:06Suicide, depression is the next big epidemic to hit the world, if it isn't already.
00:31I think it started with just a feeling, you know, it started with just a feeling of not being completely there,
00:41of feeling like, you know, like we spoke about that pittish feeling in your stomach where, you know, and just breaking down for no reason.
00:52And truly just feeling completely lost and not understanding what was happening to me.
01:00And my mother just happened to visit me, completely different context and the day she was leaving, I remember breaking down and
01:08I was extremely surprised actually today when I think back at how aware she was of what I was going through.
01:19And the first thing she did was to call a family friend and Anna Chandy who's a counsellor.
01:25I think initially I was also reluctant to take medication.
01:31But I think at one point I was just extremely exhausted, I couldn't do it anymore.
01:37And I think that's when I decided to sort of, I said, okay, you know, let me start medication,
01:44let me accept this help that people are willing to give me.
01:48And I think a large part of one's road to recovery is to accept what you're going through and to not challenge it,
01:57but to embrace it and to actually allow your body and your mind to go through that experience and know that there is,
02:05there is a road ahead that will get you out of all of this.
02:09I think for me the idea really was to just change the way people in India and in the world look at mental illness.
02:16And, you know, give it the respect that it needs.
02:21So, I think if we included that in the curriculum and we introduce just the idea of the importance of mental health at a school level,
02:33there will be no stigma because it's the same way as a child, you're creating, you're educating me about so many other things.
02:41So, educate me about the importance of mental health the same way we talk about the importance of physical health.
02:47Suicide, depression is the next big epidemic to hit the world if it isn't already.
02:53And reach out to corporates, reach out to the corporate world, tell them that it's so important in your workplace to identify what you're going through
03:02because the pressures are so high, to identify the people that you work with, you know, to help them if you see sort of any symptoms.
03:10I think basically just to create the awareness and hopefully one day, you know, we also want to be the happiest country in the world.
03:19We don't want to be the most depressed. We don't want to be the country with the highest suicide rate in the world.