25 Celebs Who Are Totally Open About Seeking Therapy

Harry Styles

In a recent interview with Better Home & Gardens, Harry Styles revealed that therapy made him feel “more alive.”

The “As It Was” singer said, “I wanted to be the one who could say I didn’t need it. I think that accepting living, being happy, hurting in the extremes, that is the most alive you can be. Losing it crying, losing it laughing—there’s no way, I don’t think, to feel more alive than that.”

Kristen Bell

Frequently candid about her experiences with both individual and couples’ counseling, Bell told Good Housekeeping in 2015: “You do better in the gym with a trainer; you don’t figure out how to cook without reading a recipe. Therapy is not something to be embarrassed about.”

Further on in her interview, she also opened up about her experiences with antidepressants as a part of her therapy experience, saying, “I have no shame in [taking antidepressants] because my mum had said if you start to feel this way, talk to your doctor, talk to a psychologist and see how you want to help yourself. And if you decide to go on a prescription to help yourself, understand that the world wants to shame you for that, but in the medical community, you would never deny a diabetic his insulin.”

Jennifer Aniston

Jennifer Aniston has made mindfulness and self-care a part of her everyday routine, from daily meditation to journaling and yoga. “I’m in a really peaceful place,” she told People in 2021, noting that “self-awareness is key” for that life phase. “I’ve really gotten a lot out of therapy,” Aniston went on. “Just being a public person, there’s a lot of amazing things that come with that. But there’s also a lot of tough stuff, because we’re only human, and we tend to walk around with bulls-eyes on our heads.”

Prince Harry

In addition to being an advocate for expanding mental health awareness and giving support to those who need treatment, Prince Harry has gotten candid about his own therapy for undisclosed mental health concerns in the past.

“I’ve done [therapy] a couple of times, more than a couple of times, but it’s great,” he told The Telegraph in 2017. “The experience that I have is that once you start talking about it, you suddenly realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club, and everybody’s gagging to talk about it.”

Selena Gomez

Selena Gomez has been one of the most outspoken celebs when it comes to mental health. That includes being honest about her own fraught journey, which has included experiences with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, and bipolar disorder, as well as the tools she’s developed to manage her symptoms. In a 2017 Vogue profile, Gomez shared that she goes to therapy five times a week and does Dialectical Behavior Therapy, which focuses on improving communication and mindfulness while learning to cope with emotional highs and lows. “DBT has completely changed my life,” Gomez said in the interview. “I wish more people would talk about therapy.”

Michelle Obama

In an interview in 2018 on The Tonight Show, the former first lady opened up about going to couple’s counseling with her former-POTUS spouse and going to solo therapy while promoting her book best-selling Becoming.

“I was one of those wives who thought, ‘I’m taking you to marriage counseling so you can be fixed, Barack Obama.’ Because I was like, ‘I’m perfect.’ I was like, ‘Dr. X, please fix him,’” she said with a smile. “And then, our counselor looked over at me. I was like, ‘What are you looking at? I’m perfect…But marriage counseling was a turning point for me, understanding that it wasn’t up to my husband to make me happy, that I had to learn how to fill myself up and how to put myself higher on my priority list.”

Kerry Washington

Kerry Washington spoke to Essence magazine about how therapy helped her vocalize and connect to her emotions better.

“Learning how to love myself and my body is a lifelong process,” she noted. “But I definitely don’t struggle the way I used to. Therapy helped me realise that maybe it’s okay for me to communicate my feelings. Instead of literally stuffing them down with food, maybe it’s okay for me to express myself.”

Jon Hamm

While chatting with The Guardian, Hamm spoke about how therapy has helped with his depression: “I struggled with chronic depression. I was in bad shape … I did do therapy and antidepressants for a brief period, which helped me. Which is what therapy does: it gives you another perspective when you are so lost in your own spiral, your own bullshit. It helps.”

Zendaya

When asked if she goes to therapy in a 2021 interview with British Vogue, Zendaya’s answer was “Of course.” The child star-turned-Emmy winner continued, “I mean, if anybody is able to possess the financial means to go to therapy, I would recommend they do that. I think it’s a beautiful thing.” She added, “there’s nothing wrong with working on yourself and dealing with those things with someone who can help you, someone who can talk to you, who’s not your mom or whatever. Who has no bias.”

Billie Eilish

A rise to fame as meteoric as Billie Eilish’s would prompt anyone to seek a little therapy, but the pop star has been open about experiencing mental health issues even before she became a household name. She suffered from body dysmorphia as a young dancer, and she started experiencing depression when an injury forced her to quit dancing. “It sent me down a hole,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019. “I went through a whole self-harming phase.”

While Eilish hadn’t fully connected with therapy in the past, she decided to give it another try when she started experiencing intense anxiety and panic attacks before a world tour. “I just was in such a bad place. It was too much on me. I was too much on me,” she said. “I don’t want advice, because I’m not going to take it anyway. I just wanted to be heard.”

Michelle Williams

A longtime mental health advocate, in July 2018, the singer revealed that she would be seeking treatment for depression on Instagram, commenting, “I recently listened to the same advice I have given to thousands around the world and sought help from a great team of healthcare professionals. Today I proudly, happily and healthily stand here as someone who will continue to always lead by example as I tirelessly advocate for betterment of those in need.”

Katy Perry

In a 2017 radio interview, Katy Perry explained how therapy helped her: “I’ve been going to therapy for about five years, and I think it has really helped my mental health incredibly. And it’s a really wonderful thing to be able to talk to someone who doesn’t judge you, because I don’t think a lot of people have that. I encourage it,” she explained, continuing, “People think it’s weird or they think yoga is weird. No, there is nothing weird about taking care of your physical and mental health. That’s awesome.”

Ariana Grande

In a 2019 cover story for Elle, Ariana Grande shared that she’d been in therapy for over a decade, since her parents divorced. “I’m a 25-year-old woman,” she said. “But I’ve also spent the past handful of years growing up under very extraordinary circumstances.” 

Grande is also a firm believer in therapy’s benefits for child stars — to the point that she believes therapy should be required for young kids in show business. “I think that the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting, and I think there should be therapists, I think there should be parents allowed to be wherever they want to be,” the former Nickelodeon star said in a 2024 episode of Penn Badgley’s podcast Podcrushed. “[It] should be in the contract — something about: ‘Therapy is mandatory twice a week.’.. A professional person to unpack what this experience of your life-changing so drastically does to you at a young age, at any age.”

Chrissy Teigen

Speaking to Glamour, Teigen opened up about getting treatment for postpartum depression after having her first child, daughter Luna: “I remember being so exhausted but happy to know that we could finally get on the path of getting better. I started taking an antidepressant, which helped. And I started sharing the news with friends and family — I felt like everyone deserved an explanation, and I didn’t know how else to say it other than the only way I know: just saying it. It got easier and easier to say it aloud every time.”

Demi Lovato

Lovato has sought treatment over the years for both mental health issues and addiction issues. While speaking to HuffPost in 2015, Lovato commented briefly on how therapy has helped her: “Having people who are professionals as well and not relying on just one person is another key to maintaining a healthy recovery. I talk to my therapist,” she stated.

Reese Witherspoon

Reese Witherspoon has always been one of Hollywood’s most booked-and-busy actresses, but when she hit her mid-40s, the Legally Blonde star realized that wasn’t “going to work for me,” she said at her company Hello Sunshine’s Shine Away event in 2023, per E! News. “I was like, ‘I was a robot and the robot broke,’” she said. “I cried and cried.”

“I didn’t feel like I was taking very good care of myself, and I wasn’t asking other people for help,” Witherspoon elaborated. That realization was part of the ongoing “hard work” Witherspoon says she’s done to learn more about herself, which included seeing a therapist as well as “reading… every self-help book,” Witherspoon recalled, “trying to understand myself and forgive the parts of myself that were broken and the parts of myself where I felt like a failure, because it was a huge part of it.”

Kesha

In a 2016 article for Elle, Kesha opened up about seeking treatment for an eating disorder.

“I felt like part of my job was to be as skinny as possible, and to make that happen, I had been abusing my body,” she told the magazine. “I just wasn’t giving it the energy it needed to keep me healthy and strong. My brain told me to just suck it up and press on, but in my heart, I knew that something had to change. So I made the decision to practice what I preach. I put my career on hold and sought treatment. I had to learn to treat my body with respect.”

Jennifer Lopez

For J.Lo, therapy was instrumental in her journey to self-compassion. “I remember when I was going through therapy, in the beginning, kind of in my late 30s, and there was a lot of talk about loving yourself,” Lopez said in a 2021 episode of Coach Conversations with Jay Shetty. It was a wake-up call for the actress and singer. “I was like, ‘I love myself,’” she said. “But obviously, I was doing all these things like my personal relationships didn’t seem like I was loving myself.” Eventually, Lopez realized she “didn’t even understand the concept of [self-love],” she said. “It took time and it’s a journey and it’s still a journey for me.”

Catherine Zeta-Jones

While speaking to People magazine about seeking treatment for her bipolar II disorder, Zeta-Jones explained, “This is a disorder that affects millions of people and I am one of them. If my revelation of having bipolar II has encouraged one person to seek help, then it is worth it. There is no need to suffer silently and there is no shame in seeking help.”

Jennifer Garner

Jennifer Garner opened up in 2010 to Parade magazine about how therapy helped her process the end of her first marriage: “It was a huge heartbreak for me to have something fail like that. I knew that this was either an opportunity for growth or I would sink… I thought, ‘Why did this relationship not work? What part of the failure is my responsibility?’ So I went to work on it. I started therapy.”

Emma Stone

Stone listed therapy in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter as one of the primary ways she battled crippling anxiety attacks as a child. 

Brooke Shields

In a 2005 op-ed for The New York Times, Shields opened up about seeking therapy and medical treatment for postpartum depression.

“I couldn’t believe it when my doctor told me that I was suffering from postpartum depression and gave me a prescription for the antidepressant Paxil,” she wrote. “I wasn’t thrilled to be taking drugs. In fact, I prematurely stopped taking them and had a relapse that almost led me to drive my car into a wall with Rowan in the backseat. But the drugs, along with weekly therapy sessions, are what saved me — and my family.”

Halle Berry

In 2013, Halle Berry spoke to The Daily Mail about her lifelong journey with therapy: “I’ve done therapy on an as-needed basis since I was probably 10 years old. My father was an alcoholic and a very abusive one, and my mother knew the value of providing me with the outlet of an unbiased person to talk to, so I’ve done that all my life when times get stressful. It really helps me deal with stuff.”

Lena Dunham

Always candid about deeply personal subjects, Lena Dunham was effusive in an interview with Stylist about seeking out therapy: “[Therapy is] paying someone to listen to you stammer until you find what’s really important. Because the fact is, we all have some underlying drive and anxiety that’s pushing us forward at all times … Having a therapist has taught me to be less cruel to myself. It’s not like therapy has made me the world’s sanest person; it just made me slightly less insane.”

Drew Carey

Drew Carey has dealt with bouts of depression and suicidal ideation since his teens, he told People in 2024. And while The Price Is Right host said he still has “down days” and dark thoughts, he now has the tools to address them, starting with therapy. “Therapy’s been a big game changer for me,” Carey said, explaining that he’s learned to be more compassionate to himself. “I remember talking to my therapist once about something I was really angry and stressed about, and she goes, ‘Well, you should be angry and distressed. There was a wrong thing that happened to you,’” he recalled. “I’ve learned to quit judging myself.”