Amanda Seyfried Talks About Living Life With Mental Illness, Why She’ll Never Get Off Her Medication

Here we are for another edition of, “Celebrities are human too!” the contestant on the show this week is Amanda Seyfried. The 30-year-old actress has had a lot of success in her career. If money is important to you, she has a net worth of $10 million. If love is important to you, she is engaged to 40-year-old actor Thomas Sadoski. Sounds like the perfect life, right? Not so fast. There is more to life than money.

Health, both mental and physical, are extremely important, and Seyfried has struggled with a mental illness for years.

Seyfried owns a home in Stone Ridge, N.Y., and she was discussing renovation plans with Allure magazine when she transitioned into talking about her life with OCD.

“I just finished renovating one of the barns for guests. I put in a bathroom and a little kitchenette, but no stove; I want people to eat meals in the house. Also, I always worry about people and how they use stoves. Which is just a controlling thing. I’m on Lexapro, and I’ll never get off of it.”

She explains that she’s been on Lexapro for 11 years. She is on the lowest dose, and she admits she might do just fine without it, but why take the risk?

It’s nothing to be ashamed of…

“Whether it’s placebo or not, I don’t want to risk it. And what are you fighting against? Just the stigma of using a tool? A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is. It should be taken as seriously as anything else.”

Several years ago, during the most intense period of her OCD, she developed health anxiety and convinced herself she was dying from a disease. At one point, she believed she had a brain tumor. Her neurologist did an MRI to rest her mind, and then sent her to a psychiatrist.

The good news is that as she gets older, the compulsive thoughts continue to dwindle. And her little calming property in upstate New York certainly helps.

“I love this place so much. I love this town! There’s a little strip mall. But it’s a cute strip mall. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts, a reflexology place. Even the grocery store is special. It’s the classic small-town grocery. There’s a lot of local things happening. And then I go to the farm stand. Everything you get is absolutely local.”