ABC/Fred LeeLady Gaga is speaking out about a very personal issue. In an open letter published on her Born This way Foundation website, the singer details her battle with post-traumatic stress disorder, which she publicly revealed on TV a few days ago.
She reveals that she was diagnosed after five years of experiencing chronic mental and physical pain. She’s now undergoing treatment. Gaga says her trauma partly stems from past events while she was on tour.
“I was overworked and not taken seriously when I shared my pain and concern that something was wrong,” she writes. “I ultimately ended up injured on the Born This Way Ball. That moment and the memory of it has changed my life forever.”
She adds, “The experience of performing night after night in mental and physical pain ingrained in me a trauma that I relive when I see or hear things that remind me of those days.”
Gaga adds that, while she is being treated with medication, “the most inexpensive and perhaps the best medicine in the world is words. Kind words…positive words…words that help people who feel ashamed of an invisible illness to overcome their shame and feel free. This is how I and we can begin to heal. I am starting today, because secrets keep you sick. And I don’t want to keep this secret anymore.”
By opening up about her own struggle, Gaga says she hopes to raise awareness that PTSD can affect all sorts of people — not just service members. She encouraged others who are in pain to seek help and ends her letter with a note from her psychologist urging the same.
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