Ranveer Singh and Deepika Padukone opened up about Ranveer’s support during Deepika’s mental health struggle. In 2015, Deepika went public with her battle with depression and anxiety. While Deepika’s mother, Ujjala Padukone, pushed the actress to seek professional help, Ranveer revealed that she reached out to Ujjala after he realised Deepika needed care and support. The actor, appearing on Koffee With Karan 8, told Karan Johar that he first realised that ‘something wasn’t right’ with Deepika in 2014, after she had a black out.
“When it first happened, in 2014, I was shooting and she called and she said, ‘I’ve had a blackout and I have had a fall. Can you come home?’ And it was literally, ‘I am coming.’ I cut the call and was on my bike, I was just out of there. When I went and I saw her, something wasn’t right. She wasn’t all there. She’s with you, she’s in front of you, she is looking at you but she’s not all there,” Ranveer recalled.
However, he understood the gravity of the situation when they were seated across the table and Deepika couldn’t stop crying. “When I knew this was a very serious problem was when she was sitting across from me and she was just crying. There were just tears, copious tears just flowing down. At a human level, the most basic question was ‘What’s wrong, baby?’ She also doesn’t know what to say to me. She’s like ‘I don’t know.’ I can feel it. I got up and I went to her and was like ‘Tell me what’s wrong, baby, what do I do?’ The reason I remember it so vividly is because it was at that moment when I felt completely helpless. I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to deal with this.’ I consulted my parents and that’s when I called Ujjala in Bangalore,” he revealed.
Soon, Deepika’s parents and sister, Ujjala, Prakash and Anisha, flew down to Mumbai and were by her side. While she was alright around them, on the day they were leaving, she broke down. “It was on the last day when they were packing and the same thing happened. I was sitting on the bed, watching them pack and getting ready to leave for the airport and I just started crying, I broke down. She said, ‘What happened?’ I said, ‘I don’t know. I’ve just been feeling helpless. I just sit there, feel helpless, I don’t know what to do, I don’t feel like living anymore and I don’t know what to do,” Deepika said, revealing that her mother pushed her into taking professional help.
Speaking about Ranveer’s support, Deepika added, “I think he understands mental illness today slightly better than he did back then. But I think the fact that he created a safe space for me to be able to be vulnerable, to be able to share, to be able to communicate, because a lot of times you’re just feeling so many things, but you don’t know how to articulate it.”
“He’s learnt over time how to be a caregiver but in that moment, we were all going through it for the first time. It told me a lot about the person that he is… He is that person who creates that safe space for you where you can just be,” Deepika said.
Deepika Padukone came out about her mental illness in 2015 and revealed that she battled depression in 2014 and sought professional help. Her foundation, Live Love Laugh aims to help those struggling with their mental health.
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