'The Crowded Room' star Amanda Seyfried overcame her own all-too-real battles with mental illness

2023-06-09 12:19

'The Crowded Room' star Amanda Seyfried opened up about her struggle with OCD and how treatment has helped her symptoms

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Oscar-nominated Amanda Seyfried will play the female protagonist opposite Tom Holland in 'The Crowded Room,' an Apple TV+ seasonal anthology series created by 'A Beautiful Mind's' Akiva Goldsman and New Regency. 'The Crowded Room' depicts the story of Danny Sullivan, who was detained in 1979 after being associated with a gunshot in New York City. Seyfried will be portraying Rya, a clinical psychologist who deals with the most difficult case of her professional life.

Academy Award winner Akiva Goldsman is the author and producer of the anthology series about mental illness, with Holland serving as executive producer. Seyfried portrays the role of a psychologist, who deals with others' mental health issues. But she herself has opened up about her struggle with mental illness, specifically her own Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD) traits.

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Amanda Seyfried suffers from OCD

Academy Award-winner Seyfried once revealed that she suffers from Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which is considerably more than just "being a bit of a clean freak." The 37-year-old actor who has been in 'Letters to Juliet' told, "I'm on Lexapro (an antidepressant), and I'll never get off of it. I've been on it since I was 19, so 11 years. I'm on the lowest dose. I don't see the point of getting off of it. Whether it's placebo or not, I don't want to risk it," to Allure. Seyfried further added, "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."

According to Forbes, OCD is a recognized medical illness, although the word is frequently misused and applied wrongly. OCD can occasionally be used as an adjective along with happy, sad, or gnarly: "Oh, she is so OCD." The word "OCD" can also be used as a verb, as in "you OCD'd" or "don't OCD on me." It is common for OCD to appear to be a passing ailment.

In the Allure interview, Seyfried also said, "I had pretty bad health anxiety that came from the OCD and thought I had a tumor in my brain. I had an MRI, and the neurologist referred me to a psychiatrist. As I get older, the compulsive thoughts and fears have diminished a lot. Knowing that a lot of my fears are not reality-based really helps."

Amanda Seyfried struggles with panic attacks

Despite being popular, the 'Mean Girls' star claims she finds it difficult to present herself as "normal." Indeed, Seyfried acknowledges that it has caused anxiety and panic attacks that had a feeling of "life or death." Seyfried told on 'Sunday Today with Willie Geist', "That's what a panic attack is, really," adding, "Your body just goes into fight or flight. The endorphin rush and the dump that happens after the panic attack is so extraordinary. You just feel so relieved and your body is just kind of recovered in a way. It's so bizarre because it's physiological, but it starts in your head."

Seyfried has been married to actor Thomas Sadoski since 2017, which somewhat added to her fame, according to Insider. However, receiving the Oscar in the 'Best Supporting Actress' category for her portrayal of Marion Davies in David Fincher's 'Mank' has elevated her status even further and has made it harder for her to demonstrate to others that she is grounded. Seyfried admitted, "Every time I meet someone new, I'm just so desperate for them to understand that you can talk to me. I wanna connect like everybody else, because I am like everybody else." The actress claimed that the fact that she and Sadoski live on a farm in rural New York rather than in Los Angeles helped her deal with her anxiety.