Lady Gaga, Prince William talk mental health in powerful FaceTime conversation

gaga-william
Photo: Heads Together/YouTube

Lady Gaga talks about her mental health in a new video posted Tuesday where the Joanne singer tells Prince William about what it was like publicly sharing her struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder in an open letter she wrote this past December.

“It made me very nervous at first. For me, waking up every day and feeling sad and going onstage is something that is very hard to describe,” Gaga says. “There’s a lot of shame attached to mental illness. You feel like something’s wrong with you. In my life I go, ‘Oh my goodness, look at all these beautiful, wonderful things that I have,’ and I should be so happy. But you can’t help it if in the morning when you wake up you are so tired, you are so sad, you are so full of anxiety and the shakes that you can barely think. But, it was like saying this is a part of me, and that’s okay.”

Prince William, who spearheaded the launch of the Heads Together campaign with his wife, Kate Middleton, and brother, Prince Harry, as a means to combat negative social stereotypes pertaining to mental illness, stressing the importance of having consistent, open conversations about sufferers’ daily struggles — something Gaga has also advocated for in the past with the inception of her Born This Way Foundation mental wellness group in 2011.

“It’s okay to have this conversation. It’s really important to have this conversation. You won’t be judged. It’s so important to break open that fear and that taboo, which is only going to lead to more problems down the line,” Prince William explains in the video. “Mental health is the same as physical health. Everybody has mental health, and we shouldn’t be ashamed of it.”

Gaga concludes: “We’re not hiding anymore. We’re starting to talk… If you’re feeling not well in your mind, you’re not alone.”

Watch the full Heads Together video above. For more information on the initiative’s goals, visit its official website here.

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