Lili Reinhart is opening up again about her ongoing battle with depression and anxiety.
The Riverdale actress got candid about her mental health on her Instagram story on Friday, and shared that she started therapy again work through her problems.
“Friendly reminder for anyone who needs to hear it: Therapy is never something to feel ashamed of,” Reinhart wrote. “Everyone can benefit from seeing a therapist.”
“I’m 22. I have anxiety and depression. And today I started therapy again,” she added. “And so the journey of self-love begins for me. And good luck to you on yours.”
Reinhart has been incredibly open about her mental health journey as a way to help others after she “struggled with it so much and for so long.”
“I know so many other young people have, and I didn’t have someone who was talking about it,” Reinhart told Ocean Drive magazine last February. “I remember being in middle and high school and hearing Demi Lovato speak up about her mental illness and that was comforting. But I wanted more people to stand up. I needed more people to relate to. I was like, all these people can’t be so happy, can they?”
“It was kind of like this unrealistic picture that was painted in front of me of all these happy, happy people, successful people, beautiful people.” she added. “And even now I’m on this wonderful show. I have money in my bank account. I have my own apartment. I have friends. I still go through and experience depression. You don’t have to be ashamed of it. You don’t need to ever justify the way you feel.”
Reinhart was first diagnosed with depression at age 14 and fell back into it the first time she moved to Los Angeles at 18. It got so bad that she had to move back home and rebuild herself “from the ground up.”
“I had to find my passion again because it had dwindled like all the money in my bank account from being in L.A. for five months, and booking two things and not seeing any money coming my way, and struggling to get out of the house and get out of bed, and struggling to make friends. It was a really rough, rough point in my life.”
She worked with a therapist back home in Ohio for six months before returning to L.A. and landing her role on Riverdale. Getting one of the starring roles on the hit show ended what Reinhart called “the worst depression I had ever experienced.”
“In the end it completely saved me,” she tweeted in 2017.