Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — 9 Celebrities Who Courageously Spoke About Their Suicidal Ideation

Suicide Prevention Awareness Month — 9 Celebrities Who Courageously Spoke About Their Suicidal Ideation

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and there is no better time to have a conversation that far too many people are still afraid to start.

Source: Facebook Watch/Peace of Mind With Taraji P. Henson / Facebook Watch/Peace of Mind

September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month and there is no better time to have a conversation that far too many people are still afraid to start. Celebrities continue to share their own struggles with suicide thoughts and why their honesty matters. 

Mental health struggles do not discriminate. They do not care how much money is in your account, how many followers you have or how many stadiums have filled up to watch you perform. The celebrities who have chosen to speak openly about their own battles with suicidal ideation are doing something more important than any red carpet appearance or chart position could ever accomplish. They are telling the people watching them that they are not alone. And for some people, that message is the difference between staying and not staying.

As The Mighty documented in their comprehensive breakdown of celebrities who have shared their mental health journeys, the list of public figures who have been honest about suicidal thoughts is longer than many people realize. Every name on it represents a moment of profound vulnerability that required courage most of us cannot fully appreciate.

BuzzFeed noted in its own coverage of celebrities speaking about mental health that public honesty from famous people creates a ripple effect in their communities that reaches people who would never seek out a hotline or a therapist on their own but who might reconsider their own silence when they see someone they admire choosing to speak out.

The stigma around suicidal ideation is particularly brutal because it layers shame onto pain that is already unbearable. When someone at the level of cultural visibility that these public figures occupy decides to remove the shame by speaking plainly about what they have experienced, it creates permission for everyone watching to do the same in their own lives. That is not a small thing. That is everything.

Here are some of the celebrities who have chosen honesty over image in regard to suicide, and in doing so, may have saved lives they will never know about.

Celebrities Who Have Shared Their Struggles With Suicide Ideation

1. AJ Brown

Source: Billie Weiss / Getty

The Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver has been one of the most refreshingly candid voices in professional sports on the topic of mental health. Brown has spoken publicly about his struggles with suicidal thoughts during some of the most difficult periods of his life, and his willingness to have that conversation as a Black man in the hypermasculine world of professional football is significant in ways that go far beyond sports. Black men are socialized to equate silence with strength and Brown’s openness directly challenges that narrative. His platform gives permission to other men, especially young Black men, to take their mental health seriously and to ask for help without shame.

2. Demi Lovato

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Lovato has been one of the most consistent and long-term advocates for mental health visibility among celebrities, speaking openly for over a decade about their struggles with addiction, eating disorders, bipolar disorder and suicidal ideation. They have turned their own pain into a public resource, using every interview and every platform available to normalize treatment-seeking and to destigmatize the kinds of mental health struggles that millions of their fans share.

3. Lady Gaga

Source: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty

The singer and actress has been candid about experiencing PTSD following a sexual assault at 19 years old and has spoken about periods of suicidal thinking connected to that trauma and to years of chronic pain. Her advocacy work through the Born This Way Foundation specifically targets young people and emphasizes that seeking help is not weakness but survival.

4. Pete Davidson

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Davidson has spoken with a level of bluntness about his mental health that is unusual even by celebrity standards. He posted a public message on Instagram in December 2018 that led to a wellness check and a subsequent conversation about what crisis looks like in real time on social media. He has since continued to speak openly about borderline personality disorder and what it has meant to his life and to his relationships.

5. Mariah Carey

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Carey revealed publicly that she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2018, a diagnosis she had kept private for nearly two decades out of fear of judgment. She has spoken about periods of severe depression and isolation and described living in denial about her diagnosis for years. Her willingness to name it publicly opened a significant conversation about mental health in the Black community.

6. Taraji P. Henson

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Henson has been one of the most important voices in the Black community specifically around mental health destigmatization. She founded the Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation in honor of her late father, whose own mental health struggles went largely unaddressed, and has spoken movingly about the particular barriers Black people face when seeking mental health support.

7. Kevin Hart

Source: Gilbert Carrasquillo / Getty

Following his car accident in 2019, Hart spoke openly about the depression and emotional darkness that followed his physical recovery, including moments where he questioned whether life was worth continuing. His platform and his willingness to be vulnerable about that period reached an audience of Black men who rarely see their own struggles reflected back to them through someone with his kind of cultural visibility.

8. Michael Phelps

Source: Stuart Franklin / Getty

The most decorated Olympian in history has been open about multiple depressive episodes during which he contemplated suicide, saying after the 2012 Olympics that he did not want to be alive. Phelps has since become one of the most vocal advocates for athlete mental health and has used his platform specifically to tell other high-performing individuals that achievement does not protect you from crisis.

9. Megan Thee Stallion

Source: TheStewartofNY / Getty

Yahoo Entertainment reports that Meg shared in court in November 2025 that she had suicidal thoughts following false claims in the media. She has been an advocate for Black women’s mental health, launching a mental health website titled Bad Bitches Have Bad Days Too that provides targeted directories, therapy funds, and crisis lifelines for marginalized groups, including Black women and girls.

Megan Thee Stallion launched a mental health resource website named Bad Bitches Have Bad Days Too that provides targeted directories, therapy funds, and crisis lifelines for marginalized groups, including Black women and girls