Amanda Seyfried just opened up about her current experience with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), decades after she was first diagnosed.
The 40-year-old Hollywood star said she was diagnosed with “really extreme” OCD at the age of 19.
In an interview with Fashionthe Mama Mia! star reflected on her diagnosis as a young actor and how she is doing today.
“I was living in Marina del Rey at the time and shooting Big Love, and my mother had to take a sabbatical from work in Pennsylvania to come live with me for a month,” she says, recalling one of her early experiences with OCD. “I had my brain scans and then I was put on medication – which I still take every night to this day.”
As a younger actor, she explained how she distanced herself from all her triggers, such as “drinking too much alcohol, not doing drugs at all, or staying out too late.”
“I would make plans and then just not leave,” she recalled, adding, “I think I did make choices. I didn’t get into that realm of nightclubs. I have to give credit to my obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
The Mean girls actress previously revealed in a 2016 interview with Allure that she takes Lexapro for her OCD, saying at the time that she had no plans to stop taking the medication.
“I’ve been taking it since I was 19, so 11 years. I’m on the lowest dose. I don’t see the point in getting off of it,” she told the outlet.
“Whether it’s a placebo or not, I don’t want to take the risk. And what are you fighting against? Just the stigma of using a device?” she asked.
“Mental illness is something that people put in a different category [from other illnesses]but I don’t think so. It should be taken as seriously as anything else. You don’t see the mental illness: it’s not a mass; it’s not a cyst. But it’s there. Why do you have to prove it? If you can treat it, treat it,” concluded Amanda Seyfried.
