Lady Gaga reveals battle with psychosis ahead of new album release: ‘It took me out…’

Lady Gaga opens up about overcoming mental health challenges and the support of her fiancé.

In her highly anticipated appearance on The Interview podcast by The New York Times, Lady Gaga opens up about her long-awaited return to music with her new album, Mayhem. Candid and vulnerable, the pop icon reveals the personal struggles that kept her away from the studio for so long, sharing how mental health challenges influenced her decision to step back from music.

In a revealing podcast, Lady Gaga talks about her new album, Mayhem, and the mental health challenges that delayed her musical comeback.(Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Lady Gaga shares about her psychosis before new album

Gaga shared on the podcast, “[Five years ago], I had psychosis. I was not deeply in touch with reality for a while. It took me out of life in a big way, and after a lot of years of hard work I got myself back.” She revealed that she met her longtime partner Michael Polansky, who she is currently engaged to, right around the time she was beginning to recover but still far away from feeling her best.

The singer, “It was a hard time, and it was actually really special when I met my partner because when I met Michael, I was in a much better place, but I remember him saying to me, pretty early on, ‘I know you could be a lot happier than you are.” She continued, “It was really hard for me to hear him say that because I didn’t want him to think that of me. I wanted him to think I was like this happy, totally together person,” as reported by Elle.

The Poker Face singer confessed that she continues to find it hard to speak out about her mental health and related struggles in public where it is still frequently a taboo subject. During the podcast, she explained, “It’s something that I have found increasingly harder to talk about. I hate feeling defined by it. It felt like something I felt ashamed of. But I don’t think that we should feel ashamed if we go through times like that. I mostly just wish to say, it can get better. It did for me, and I’m grateful for that.”

However, Gaga added that despite the hard times, she is doing better than she ever was and having Polansky by her side has been a wonderful addition to her life. She expressed, “From the moment that I met Michael, he had the most warm and kind disposition of maybe anyone that I had met in my whole life.”