Gabrielle Union is celebrating National Mental Health Awareness Month with a video where she shares her own struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder, hoping hat others who have endured similar situations won’t feel alone.
“I'm here to tell you that I am a PTSD survivor, thriver, badass mf'er. I was diagnosed with PTSD at 19 after I was raped at gunpoint, and I didn't let it stop me,” she shared. “I didn't want it to define my whole life, and it doesn't have to. Asking for help, needing help doesn't make you weak or less worthy of love or support or success. You can literally be anything you want to be. PTSD isn't a death sentence. You don't have to be alone or feel isolated.
"There's so many of us out there who are dealing with exactly what you're dealing with. It doesn't make you weak. It doesn't make you anything but human, and we all have something. You might even become a successful actress and best-selling author and, I don't know, be dope because that's what you deserve.”
The video is part of an ongoing series for The Child Mind Institute’s #MyYoungerSelf campaign, where each day in the month of May, a celebrity will share a homemade video where they speak to their younger selves about the trauma they experienced. Others who have participated in the cause include Kristen Bell, James Van Der Beek, and Michael Phelps.
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