Pakistani Actress Mahira Khan Talks About Battling Depression & It’s Heartbreaking

From Fahad Khan to Saba Qamar, many Pakistani actors have made a mark with their stellar performances in Bollywood. And no doubt, Mahira Khan happens to be one of them. The actress, who is set to tie the knot soon for the second time, made her Bollywood debut with Raees alongside Shah Rukh Khan. But who would have thought that her journey with Bollywood would end on a bitter note and she would be diagnosed with depression?

Mahira went on to garner much praise for her performance in Raees which was released in Jan 2017. However, she didn’t get to enjoy it all in its full glory. It was four months before the film’s release that the Uri attack happened, leading to things getting messy between India and Pakistan. 

The actress recently got into a conversation with FWhy Podcast and revealed how all of it affected her. She said, “I had finished the film (Raees) and everything was going fine and then suddenly this attack (Uri attack) happens. Politically everything gets messed. With India, it is always political. But the fact that it could get this messy! I was not scared, but I was threatened. Constant tweets, in fact, I would get calls, and very scary ones. The only thing I wanted was that ‘Okay fine I can’t go to India to promote it (Raees), but I hope it releases in my country because I knew people would rush to watch it as he (Shah Rukh Khan) is loved here (in Pakistan).“

But this was not it. In the same year, a picture of the actress smoking, alongside Ranbir Kapoor in New York, went viral. And it was enough to take the internet by storm. She received severe backlash for the same, leading her to go into depression. Opening about the whole fiasco, Mahira said, “That (backlash) brought out the anxiety and depression hidden inside me. That was a hard time for me. I felt attacked. The constant backlash… you are getting mean tweets, comments on their channels (Indian channels). That was a time my faith broke and I developed severe anxiety to the point that one day I had a panic attack and fainted. That’s the first time I went for therapy. But that didn’t work out, as I went to several therapists… that year was rough… I couldn’t sleep, my hands used to shake.”

She further added, “I ended up in a psychiatrist’s office. We’ll talk about everything later, but I need you to know that you have manic depression. This is the first time I’m saying that, I don’t know if I should. It’s been six-seven years, I’ve been on anti-depressants. I tried leaving them in the middle, and I went into a very, very dark space.” She then said, “Yes, everyone has sad times and happy times and success and failure, but clinical depression is real.”

Though the world worships celebrities and actors as gods, they sometimes tend to forget that they are humans too. Reflecting back, everyone could have been a little kinder towards the actress. And opening up about one’s mental health requires a lot of courage and kudos to Mahira for doing that.

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