Actress and TV host Shibani Dandekar has opened up about her battle with depression in the hopes to remove the stigma attached to discussing mental health.
Dandekar, who is currently dating Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar, also admitted that she still sees a therapist to help her through her issues.
“I’ve suffered from depression in the past. I work with a therapist twice a month. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it. Even though I love my life and I’m happy there are things that I need to work through a therapist with and I think that that’s you know totally acceptable and it’s okay,” Dandekar told entertainment portal Bollywood Bubble.
“And after you work with a therapist a lot of your sentences start with what my therapist says…I think that’s the way you should just move on in life it’s important to really make this something that people do not have to hide,” she continued.
Speaking about her depression more openly, the actress said she realised something was amiss from a young age. “I kind of battled with depression more in my teens so it’s not recent although sometimes as human beings you go through bouts of it just normally. The major portion of it for me was anywhere between 15 to 21. I remember almost feeling not comfortable to be able to share it. Not because I worried about how people would think of me but I just wasn’t very good at talking about my feelings,” she revealed.
Dandekar, who was last seen in ‘Love in the Times of Corona’, which was released on Indian digital platform Voot Select, also spoke about her relationship with Akhtar and their marriage plans. The couple has been staying together for a while now and there has been plenty speculation on the two of them getting hitched soon.
When the portal posed the same question, she responded: “Everyone is asking me the same question, I would say the topic has not come up yet. I will figure this out and then I will tell people.”
