I kept talking to myself, and I would get no answers: Deepika Padukone

Mumbai: Deepika Padukone, who recently opened up about her battle with depression for a brief period last year, has finally broken her silence on one of the toughest phases in her life. For the first time on television, the actress spoke with NDTV about the struggle and how she overcame it, and never gave up.

The actress admitted that she never once thought of giving up the fame during her struggle. She said, “I really don't think I questioned my work. Actually like I said sometimes, I think it really depended on where I was swinging and where I was going at that point.”

Deepika sought the professional help of Anna Chandy, who helped her cope with her depression and come out of it. The actress often exchanged text messages with her, and ‘created a space simultaneously, where she could express herself with what was happening in her private world’.

Chandy said, “She used her vulnerability as her strength, because day after day she was continuing her responsibilities in her job and she would text me saying 'I have this feeling of emptiness' or 'There's emptiness in me'. The next thing is she's back to her performance.”

The actress also described what she went through in detail. She often had a ‘weird’ hollow feeling that she explained as a mixture of anxiety and emptiness. “My breathing was different. My breathing wasn't like deep breaths. It was very shallow, uneven breaths. (I was)Sometimes gasping for breath. I would say feeling empty in my stomach and they explained it as the ‘pit-ish’ feeling and I think that’s the first thing I said to them because that was that thing that just wouldn’t go. It felt like a knot in my stomach.”

“You know I would feel like, whenever I've had malaria or if I’ve hurt my ankle, I've always had my mind to help me recover. What do I do in a case like this where my mind itself is not talking to me? Now my mind is not talking to me so now where do I go? Now what do I do? That was the constant and I kept talking to myself and I'd get no answers.”

Deepika has decided to launch the ‘Live Love Laugh Foundation’, to promote mental health care in the country. According to reports, the actress has been working closely with a team of experts and psychiatrists for months now, and the name has also been registered. The actress plans to dedicate 2015 to promoting mental health care in the country and discussing the issue more openly.

Deepika revealed her aim is "If I can impact one life in this entire process of speaking up and letting people know that it's something I have been through and something that I could deal with because I had a fantastic support system."