Lady Gaga has revealed that she suffered a breakdown after she was raped at 19 and fell pregnant as a result.
The singer and actress shared a tearful account of the traumatic sexual assault on Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey's mental health docuseries, The Me You Can't See.
In an emotional interview for the documentary, Gaga, 35, said she was raped by a record producer, causing her to suffer a "total psychotic break".
She recalled, per the Metro: "I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, 'Take your clothes off.' And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn't stop.
"They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and I—I don’t even remember."
Breaking down in tears, the 'Bad Romance' singer vowed she would never name the producer who raped her. Gaga then went on to describe how she couldn't feel her own body following the horrific incident.
She felt both numbness and pain and was sent to a psychiatrist years later, but received no treatment for her physical symptoms.
The Oscar winner explained: "First I felt full-on pain, then I went numb. And then I was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks after, and I realized that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner.
"At my parents' house because I was vomiting and sick. Because I’d been being abused. I was locked away in a studio for months. I had a total psychotic break, and for a couple years, I was not the same girl.
"The way that I feel when I feel pain was how I felt after I was raped. I’ve had so many MRIs and scans where they don’t find nothing. But your body remembers."
The artist said she was still experiencing the emotional turmoil from the "psychotic break" when she won the Academy Award for best for Best Original Song for A Star Is Born in 2019.
Gaga then steered the topic toward her experience with self-harm. She explained that while she has learned "all the ways to pull myself out of it", she added that "all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad".
She said: "You know why it’s not good to cut? You know why it's not good to throw yourself against the wall? You know why it’s not good to self-harm? Because it makes you feel worse.
"You think you’re going to feel better because you’re showing somebody, 'Look, I’m in pain.' It doesn’t help. I always tell people, 'Tell somebody, don’t show somebody.'"
Over the years, Gaga said that she has found ways of coping with her ordeal but noted that the improvement in her mental health was not a "straight line".
If you or anyone you know has suffered sexual assault, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE.
