Selena Gomez revealed she may never be able to get pregnant due to her bipolar disorder medication.
The 30-year-old singer and actor has opened up about her experiences with bipolar disorder, after she was first diagnosed in 2018. In a recent cover story for Rolling Stone, Gomez explained how she’s tried to make “friends” with her bipolar disorder, despite the effects it has on her hopes to one day become a mother.
Gomez told Rolling Stone about a time when she visited a friend who was trying to get pregnant. The Only Murders in the Building star recalled how she cried in her car after their visit because the two medications she takes for her bipolar disorder make it unlikely that she will be able to carry her own children.
“That’s a very big, big, present thing in my life,” she said. “However I’m meant to have them, I will.”
According to the Indian Journal of Psychiatry, bipolar disorder medications during pregnancy can potentially cause birth defects, behavioural issues, and long-term neurobehavioral problems.
Women with bipolar disorder are also exposed to the risk of increased bipolar symptoms and episodes during pregnancies – so doctors face the difficult decision of whether or not people with bipolar disorder should take certain medications during pregnancy.
In the interview, Selena Gomez detailed an “episode of psychosis” she experienced in 2018 when she began to hear loud voices. She then spent several months in a treatment facility, although Gomez said she “only remembers snippets” of this time.
Following her bipolar disorder diagnosis, the Disney Channel alum was prescribed a slew of medications, which she said made her feel “gone”.
“There was no part of me that was there anymore,” Gomez said.
Ultimately, she ended up finding a psychiatrist who realised she was on too many medications, and took her off all but two.
“He really guided me,” she said. “But I had to detox, essentially, from the medications I was on. I had to learn how to remember certain words. I would forget where I was when we were talking. It took a lot of hard work for me to accept that I was bipolar, but learn how to deal with it because it wasn’t going to go away.”
Selena Gomez revealed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder back in 2020 when she appeared on Miley Cyrus’s Instagram Live series titled “Bright Minded”.
Gomez admitted at the time that she found out she was bipolar during a visit to a hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
“I went to one of the best mental hospitals in America, McClean Hospital, and I discussed that after years of going through a lot of different things, I realised that I was bipolar,” Gomez said. “I was equal parts terrified and relieved – terrified because the veil was lifted but relieved that I finally had the knowledge of why I had suffered with various depressions and anxieties for so many years. I never had full awareness or answers about this condition. When I have more information, it actually helps me, it doesn’t scare me once I know it.”
Bipolar, previously called “manic depression”, is a serious mental health condition where people experience significant swings in mood, with episodes of hyperactivity and depression.
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