Selena Gomez is the most followed Instagram artist in the world, with 144 million fans. But now she’s taking a break from social media because of what friends and family have called an “emotional breakdown.”
“As much as I am grateful for the voice that social media gives each of us, I am equally grateful to be able to step back and live my life present to the moment I have been given,” Gomez wrote in an Instagram post dated Sept. 23. “Kindness and encouragement only for a bit! Just remember — negative comments can hurt anybody’s feelings. Obvi.”
As someone who suffers from lupus, an immune-system disease, Gomez received a kidney transplant from her fellow actress and best friend Francia Raisa in 2017. Low white blood cell count due to the transplant is one reason Gomez landed in the hospital this past September. She was released several days later from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles but is now apparently back in the hospital at an East Coast psychiatric ward to attend to her mental health.
According to TMZ, Gomez’s most recent hospital stay is because of a nervous breakdown. The outlet also reports that the 26-year-old singer suffered a “meltdown” and that she “freaked out.” Protesting her detention in the hospital, she reportedly tried severing her IVs.
This is not the first time Gomez has sought treatment for mental health. During a 2016 hospital stay, she released the following statement to CNN:
I’ve discovered that anxiety, panic attacks, and depression can be side effects of lupus, which can present their own challenges. I want to be proactive and focus on maintaining my health and happiness and have decided that the best way forward is to take some time off.
Gomez is reportedly receiving dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT), a type of psychotherapy often used to treat people with borderline personality disorder and other mood disorders, and particularly symptoms that include self-injury, substance abuse, fear of abandonment, or suicidal ideation.
Gomez’s most recent performance was a cameo in Jennifer Lopez’s Vegas residency on Sept. 22. The next day, she posted that she would be taking a break from social media once she’d hosted an Instagram Live session, during which she answered questions from fans and said depression had taken its toll on the previous five years of her life.
Gomez has been getting flack and negative comments on social media since her ex, Justin Bieber, got engaged to Ocean’s 8 actress Hailey Baldwin.
Selena Gomez went to rehab in 2014, for alcohol, marijuana, and the sleep med Ambien abuse. It is unknown whether or not she has relapsed.
