Katy Perry reveals she had suicidal thoughts in 2017: 'I just crashed'
Katy Perry says her mental health was in a very bad place in 2017.
The “Daisies” singer said during an interview on CBCListen’s Q With Tom Power that her breakup with Orlando Bloom that year, as well as disappointing album sales for Witness, had a "seismic" effect that "literally broke me in half.” During that period, she experienced suicidal thoughts.
"I lost my smile," Perry said. "I don't know if my smile was ever fully, authentically mine but I was riding on the high of a smile for a long time. Which was the validation, love and admiration from the outside world, and then that shifted."
Perry explained that her career was “on this trajectory [of] always going up, up, up, up, up, up, up,” and then she had “the smallest shift,” after criticism of Witness. “It wasn’t that huge from an outside perspective, but to me it was seismic ... I had given so much out, and it literally broke me in half,” she shared.
She explained of that period, “I had broken up with my boyfriend, who is now my baby daddy-to-be,” Perry said of Bloom. “Then I was excited about flying high off the next record — and the record didn't get me high anymore ... The validation didn't get me high. So I just crashed.”
She called it a “good crash” and a “necessary brokenness,” explaining that it “was so important for me to be broken so that I could find my wholeness in a whole different way. And be more dimensional than just living my life like a thirsty pop star all the time.”
Perry credits "gratitude” as “probably the thing that saved my life, because if I didn't find that I would have wallowed in my own sadness and probably just jumped, but I found the ways to be grateful."
Perry said “hope” has also kept her going.
"Hope has always been an option for me,” she said, “because of my relationship with God and something bigger than me. If I'm the only one controlling my destiny of course it's going to be, like, I am going to drive it into the ground ... My hope is that something bigger than me created me for a purpose and created me for a reason, and that I'm not disposable, and that, you know, every person that's been created has a purpose."
Perry, promoting her upcoming sixth studio album, revealed last month that she became “clinically depressed” when Witness struggled commercially — despite debuting at No. 1 — compared with the mega success of her previous three albums (One of the Boys, Teenage Dream and Prism). "I became very insecure and had to go on a journey, both emotionally, spiritually and psychologically to understand why I relied so much on validation.”
Perry previously spoke of having suicidal thoughts during her 2017 session with Dr. Siri Sat Nam Singh on Viceland’s The Therapist.
Perry and Bloom have been together off and on since 2016. They were first seen publicly in January that year, but just over a year later, they split. In August 2017 they started hanging out again and were fully back on the next year. They became engaged on Valentine’s Day 2019. In March, she announced they are expecting their first child together — a surprise announcement in her single “Never Worn White.” The baby girl is expected this summer.
If you or someone you know are experiencing suicidal thoughts, call 911, or call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 1-800-273-8255 or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
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