Image Instagrammed by Deepika. (courtesy: DeepikaPadukone)
Happy Birthday, Deepika Padukone. The actress turns 38 today. From making our hearts skip a beat with her killer fashion statements to impeccable screen presence, the actress has been ruling our hearts and how. Deepika has also been an active advocate of mental health awareness. She has been extensively working towards de-stigmatising mental illness. In a recent conversation with Vogue, Deepika spoke about her struggle with mental health. She said, “It was the most painful thing I have gone through—not just for me, but also for my caregivers. Every day, it takes work to make sure that I don't have a relapse and slip into it again. But maybe because I have healed, I am now able to say that I'm grateful for the experience because it made me a better person. I learnt a lot from it and it gave me the ability to impact the lives of millions of other people. It allowed me to find my true calling.”
“I don't take it for granted that I have been surrounded by people who, even if they didn't fully understand it, have been empathetic, supportive and patient. But mental health issues still don't get the same sort of understanding as physical ailments do. Human nature is such that you react only to things that you see. This just means that all of us in the mental health space have to work that much harder for it be seen,” Deepika Padukone added.
This comes weeks after, Deepika Padukone and her husband, actor Ranveer Singh, discussed mental health on Karan Johar's talk show, Koffee With Karan Season 8. During the first episode, Ranveer said, “When it first happened in 2014, I was shooting. She [Deepika] called and she said ‘I have had a blackout and I've had a fall. Can you come home?' I cut the call and I was on my bike straight to her house. When I saw her, something wasn't right. She's in front, she's looking at you but she's not all there.”
“One day at breakfast she was sitting across from me and she was just crying and there were just tears. Copious tears flowing down,” added Ranveer Singh, expressing that he felt “helpless” and called Deepika's parents.
On the work front, Deepika Padukone will be next seen in Fighter alongside Hrithik Roshan. The spy-thriller will be released on January 25. She also has Nag Ashwin's Kalki 2898 AD alongside Prabhas.