Shaheen Bhatt, author of a book detailing her struggle with mental health, has revealed in a Humans Of Bombay post on Facebook that she has lived with mental illness since she was 12. "Mental illness has been a part of my life ever since I was 12. I woke up one day and felt empty, hollow and just... confused," she says, "No one really spoke about mental illness back then." Shaheen, who is actress Alia Bhatt's elder sister, revealed that for a while, she thought of herself as a "typical teenager - one who was irritable, slept too much and never left her room" and that she refused to get help for six years because she "didn't want to seem 'weak or crazy.'" Shaheen, 31, reveals that she opened up about the way she was feeling and started therapy after becoming suicidal.
In the Humans Of Bombay post, Shaheen Bhatt touches upon the time she was left out of a photoshoot with sisters Alia and Pooja because they looked alike and she was "overweight and much darker." This had a profound impact on her self-worth. "Incidents like these, along with my schoolmates making fun of me for my weight made me feel like I'm not good enough," Shaheen said. Speaking to Rajeev Masand in 2019, Shaheen said about being excluded from the photoshoot, "Shame is central. I wish people can understand that shame is central to any feeling of depression and any feeling of sadness and it stops you from being vulnerable. You constantly fear that if you will show yourself as you are, you will be rejected by society."
After Shaheen Bhatt shared her struggle with her family, they were supportive. "When Alia told me how guilty she felt about not knowing, I almost wished I had opened up to her earlier. They made it easy for me to talk to them and over time I began sharing everything," she said in the Humans Of Bombay post.
Read Shaheen Bhatt's Humans Of Bombay post here:
Shaheen Bhatt, the elder of Mahesh Bhatt and Soni Razdan's two daughters, detailed her battle with depression in a book she launched last year called I've Never Been (un)Happier. On World Mental Health Day last year, Shaheen launched an initiative called 'Here Comes The Sun,' with an objective to encourage people to open up about depression and anxiety. Alia Bhatt shared a heartfelt note for her on Instagram.
Now, as Shaheen Bhatt says in her Humans Of Bombay post, she "doesn't wait for things to go bad" to take care of herself.
