In the new new documentary, "Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me," released Nov. 4 on Apple TV, the multi-hyphenate reveals what was really going on behind the scenes of her soaring career — specifically, her journey with mental health.
Gomez, in the documentary, said she entered a mental health care facility in 2016 after cutting her Revival World Tour short, and again in 2018 following her kidney transplant.
For Gomez's mother, Mandy Teefey, the 2018 hospitalization came as a surprise: She learned about it through a phone call from the press.
“We heard about her mental breakdown through TMZ,” Teefey says in the documentary. “They called me and wanted to know what my daughter was doing in the hospital with a nervous breakdown.”
“She didn’t want anything to do with me," she says, referring to their estrangement at the time. "I was scared she was going to die."
Teefey says that her fears continued through her daughter's treatment. “You hang on as tight as you can and try to help them with their treatment. And that’s the hardest thing to do — to just go to bed and hope that they wake up the next day.”
In a voiceover in the documentary, Gomez gives insight into how she exactly was feeling in those vulnerable moments in her life.
“It hurts when I think about my past,” she says. “I want to know how to breathe again. Do I love myself?
Gomez publicly revealed her diagnosis with bipolar disorder in 2020, but was diagnosed in 2019, per the documentary.
“I didn’t know how I’d cope with my diagnosis. What if it happened again? What if the next time, I didn’t come back? I needed to keep learning about it. I needed to take it day by day,” she says in the documentary.
The rest of the documentary, set over a six-year period, sees Gomez seeking treatment for her mental and physical health.
She now stars in “Only Murders in the Building" on Hulu, has her own makeup line and continues to advocate for mental health awareness on social media and through charitable initiatives.
Today, Gomez says she’s adjusted to her diagnosis. “It’s something that I’m not ashamed of. I had to learn things that completely fell out of my mind. It was like, ‘Hey, you’re not a bad person. You’re not a gross person. You’re not crazy. You’re not any of this. But you’re gonna have to deal with this. I know it’s a lot but this is the reality,’” she says.
