Bella Hadid opens up about ‘excruciating’ mental health struggles

Supermodel Bella Hadid has gotten candid about struggling with her mental health and how she’s coping with it.

Hadid, the sister of model Gigi Hadid, also explained to WSJ Magazine for their ‘My Monday Morning’ series why she posted pictures of herself crying on Instagram last year.

“I would have really depressive episodes and my mom or my doctor would ask how I was and instead of having to respond in text, I would just send them a photo,” she said. “It was the easiest thing for me to do at the time because I was never able to explain how I was feeling.”

Her post from November 2021 got fans worried, as it featured a number of pictures of the celebrity in tears and looking distraught.

“I would just be in excruciating and debilitating mental and physical pain, and I didn’t know why. That was over the past three years,” Hadid added. “[When I posted them] it was to make sure that anybody that was feeling that way knew it was OK to feel that way.”

Known for gracing the ramps at fashion shows all over the, Hadid said she wanted to show a different side to herself with her social media post.

She told the publication: “Even though on Instagram things look so beautiful, at the end of the day, we are all cut from the same cloth. I felt like it was just good for me to be able to speak my truth and at some point I wasn’t able to post nice pretty pictures anymore. I was over it.”

Despite her struggles in the public eye, the model says she’s doing better.

“I do have good days. Today is a good day. My brain fog is feeling better, I don’t feel depressed. I don’t have as much anxiety as I usually do,” she said. “But tomorrow I could wake up and [be] the complete opposite. That’s why I get so overwhelmed.”

This is not the first time Hadid has detailed her mental health journey.

In September 2021, Hadid posted on Instagram about how she has “suffered from extreme depression and anxiety for most of my teenage and adult life. Since I was 14, I had tried everything to help myself feel better... My social anxiety was something that slowly crept up on me as I grew into my twenties.”

In her November post, she wrote about how “self help and mental illness/chemical imbalance is not linear and it is almost like a flowing rollercoaster of obstacles… it has its ups and downs, and side to sides. But I want you to know, there is always light at the end of the tunnel, and the rollercoaster always comes to a complete stop at some point.”