Deepika Padukone Gets Thumbs Up From Users for Trying to De-stigmatise Mental Illness

Actress Deepika Padukone has tried to highlight issues around mental stress and loneliness by recalling instances when she fought her own battles with mental illness in an interview with The New York Times.

She later thanked the Times for giving her a chance to raise awareness.

Her tweet was appreciated by social media users, who called her an "inspirational queen".

In a first-person piece, Padukone throws light on how, according to the World Health Organisation, 300 million people across the world are facing the same challenge silently and totally unaware of the what is happening to them.

She says, “Only a person close to you like your mother will only notice such things.”

The actress, who has been in hit films like “Bajirao Mastani”, “Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani” and “Chennai Express” says that personal experience propelled her to open a foundation called The Live Love Laugh Foundation.

Her foundation aims to spread awareness of mental illness. The Bollywood actress said:

“We have run public health campaigns, started school programmes, conducted studies, partnered with doctors and launched a mental health care project devoted to rural parts of the country.”