Deepika Padukone admits her battle against Depression at India Economic Summit, New Delhi

Deepika Padukone’s battle with depression is no more a secret now, its the time again Deepika Padukone has spoken about depression and how her life was affected by the whole phase where nothing felt right recently in an event in New Delhi

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She admitted her experiences have been a major reason why she established The Live Love Laugh’ foundation. However, in a first, Deepika Padukone expressed how her battle with depression in the past has been “such a bad experience” that she always carries a fear of relapse.

Along with Karo Johar, Alia Bhat and many others Deepika participated in India Economic Forum at New Delhi and said, “I don’t think I can say that I’m completely over it (depression). There is always a fear at the back of my mind that I might have a relapse because it has been such a bad experience for me.” When asked if speaking out loud of having suffered from depression had ever cost her a movie, she said she wasn’t entirely sure but that there could have been producers who did not want to approach her for their films. “Maybe there are people who haven’t offered me films because they think I was depressed and I can’t act. Maybe, I don’t know. I’m in a good space because I can choose the movies that I want to act in, but I don’t think everyone has that luxury of where they want to work or when they want to work,” she said

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Deepika added that the best way to do away with the stigma attached with this mental illness would be to include it as a part of the curriculum in schools. “A large part of the stigma comes from the fact that we (just) talk about physical education in schools. I had physical education in my school, but we didn’t have anything to talk about mental health. It’s not a part of the curriculum. If we included that in the curriculum and introduced the idea or the importance of mental health at school level, there will be no stigma,” she said. The Padmavati actress founded ‘The Live Love Laugh’ foundation for people who are battling depression.

While elaborating more about  the illness, Deepika said that policymakers and people at workplaces ought to understand, recognise and normalise depession so that those suffering from it could confide and speak about it more openly without any fear of losing their jobs. Recounting her decision of speaking about the illness in public, she said that she didn’t think about the repercussions at that time. “The idea really was to change the way people in India and the world see mental illness,” she emphasized.

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Deepika Padukone is all geared up for her  magnum opus movie Padmavati, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali,  Depika has recently shot for her cameo i Anand L Rai’s film that have Shah Rukh Khan playing a dwarf

She will next be seen in Vishal Bhardwaj’s production venture on the Mafia Queen, Sapna Didi alongside Irrfan Khan.