Mahira Khan opens up for the first time about bipolar disorder diagnosis, says Raees backlash triggered it

The backlash that she experienced after Raees was a trigger, she said. “I ended up in a psychiatrist’s office, and she said, ‘We’ll talk about everything later, but I need you to know that you have manic depression’. This is the first time I’m saying that, I don’t know if I should. It’s been six-seven years, I’ve been on anti-depressants. I tried leaving them in the middle, and I went into a very, very dark space.”

Mahira said that she is inherently a ‘very hopeful person’, but she understood that what she was going through couldn’t be addressed with prayers, or spending time with friends. Mahira said that she was ‘in and out of hospitals’ until as recently as last year, when things became very bad. “Yes, everyone has sad times and happy times and success and failure, but clinical depression is real,” she said, noting that while she experienced triggers, a lot of it is also genetic.

Mahira also described how she felt when she was at her lowest, after she decided to stop taking her medicines. “Last year, I was bad, I was in bed… I remember, very well, that I couldn’t even get up from my bed to go to the bathroom. I was that bad, it was that dark. I remember praying, ‘I promise you Allah, if you show me even this much hope or light, I will take it and I will run with it.’ And when he did, and when I went back on my medicines, I woke up feeling like, ‘Oh my god, I feel like I can smile, feel lighter’.”

She added, “Even in my darkest, worst moments, I never project it. It’s all inside me, mere andar tabahi mach rahi hai, but… It’s been a journey with my depression. I’ve had to work through it, I’ve had to dance through it…” Mahira thanked her friends, family, and therapist for standing by her side through it all. She also made a special mention about ‘the person (she) is with right now’, who was so understanding despite not having experienced what she was going through. She said that she’s grateful for the ‘glimmer of hope’ that she can still sense, and wants as many people as possible to know that they are not alone if they are experiencing something similar.