Kristen Bell Shares Mental Health Struggles

We all have our struggles. Kristen Bell and Gabrielle Union are among the stars sharing their struggles with mental health and learning disorders in the second annual installment of The Child Mind Institute‘s #MyYoungerSelf campaign.

In an emotional video, Bell says she’s struggled with depression and anxiety since she was 18. She explains, if she could, she’d tell her younger self to not be “fooled by this game of perfection that humans play.”

• She adds: “Instagram and magazines and TV shows strive for a certain aesthetic and everything looks so beautiful and people seem like they don’t have any problems.”
• “But everyone’s human,” Bell added. “Everyone has problems. Everyone feels yucky on the inside sometimes.”
• Union shared her struggle with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).
• “I’m here to tell you that I am a PTSD survivor, thriver, bad a– m f–er,” Union says in a homemade video. “I was diagnosed with PTSD at 19 after I was raped at gunpoint – and I didn’t let it stop me. I didn’t want it to define my whole life, and it doesn’t have to. Asking for help, needing help doesn’t make you weak or less worthy of love or support or success.”
• She adds, “You can literally be anything you want to be. PTSD isn’t a death sentence. You don’t have to be alone or feel isolated. There are so many of us out there who are feeling with exactly what you’re dealing with and it doesn’t make you weak. It doesn’t make you anything but human.”
• May marks National Mental Health Awareness Month, and celebs like Bell, Union, James Van Der Beek, Brittany Snow and Sarah Silverman are sharing personal videos and stories.