Cara Delevingne Reveals Depression Struggle: 'I Wanted the World to Swallow Me Up'

The ‘Paper Towns’ star says she first experienced depression when she was 15. (Photo: Instagram.com/caradelevingne)

Twenty-three-year-old model and actress Cara Delevingne has opened up about her struggles with depression, explaining that she first experienced symptoms of the condition when she was a teenager.

The star has never shied away from discussing her problems with the fashion industry or life in the public eye, but this is the first time she’s spoken so candidly about battling depression. She detailed her experiences with depression at the Women in the World London Summit last week, even reading a poem she’d written while she was at a low point.

Delevingne first experienced depression when she was 15, she told host Rupert Everett. “I was at school… I really wanted to do well at school to please my parents, to please my family. I didn’t really care that much about school because I knew I was never going to be very good at it. I think I pushed myself so far, I got to the point where I had a bit of a mental breakdown… I got to the point where I was a bit mad. I was completely suicidal, didn’t want to live anymore… I wanted the world to swallow me up, and nothing seemed better to me than death.”

Eventually, she says, “I was taken out of school, got therapy, got put on antidepressants, kind of clawed my way back to rational thought, which took a while.”

During that time, she was also introduced to the modeling world — and after a year of struggling to make it as a model, she was cast in a Burberry campaign, and the rest is well-documented history. But the pressure of the modeling industry took a toll: “You constantly are told that you’re not pretty enough, and not tall enough, and not skinny enough, and there are people who are better. And when you’re young, you think that means you’re not good enough as a person,” she explains.

(Photo: Instagram.com/caradelevingne)

“I really wanted someone to stop me — I wanted someone to go, ‘You need to take a break, you need to look after yourself,’” she continues. “And no one did, because I was the one who had it all, like, I had what everyone wanted … I should’ve been happy.”

Even though Delevingne knew she should feel lucky for her achievements at this time, she felt like she “never deserved any of it, that I was living somebody else’s dream,” she says. “…I also realized how lucky I was and what a wonderful family, wonderful friends I had, but that didn’t matter.“ Those feelings eventually prompted her to take a break from it all.

While on her break, she started writing. “Writing probably saved my life. … I would write, and I would read what I’d written, and it was like someone else is talking to me… It was like, ‘What? Is that how I feel?’ It was a very strange experience.” She started practicing yoga, which helped her to break down the emotional barriers she’d set up. But most important to her mental health was “finding people around you who have your best interests at heart,” she says. “I had a lot of people around me who were just after what I gave them.”

Delevingne says she’s in a stabler place now, though she still experiences depression from time to time. ”It comes back, it’s a reoccurring thing that you can’t really sort away,” she explains.

Now, Delevingne is determined to help others with mental conditions feel like they’re not alone. “I have so many messages in terms of just young girls, and how mental illness and depression is not something to be ashamed of,” she tells Everett. “And I wish at that time I had realized that other people go through it, that I could talk to other people. That you’re not alone and you’re not an alien. … Supporting each other, and reaching out, and communicating, it’s the most important thing.”

Delevingne isn’t the only celeb who’s recently spoken out about experiencing depression — comedian and actress Sarah Silverman revealed her 31-year-long battle with depression to Glamour just this week, and actress Hayden Panettiere has also publicly announced that she is seeking treatment for postpartum depression.

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