"How the Mental Health Aspect of Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me Delivers a Message of Hope"
Ana C.
Selena Gomez starts off the Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me music documentary by promising that she will only share her darkest secrets, and that is just what she does. This film puts mental health up front and center. The documentary centers around Gomez's mental health journey, starting with her breakdown at the Revival Tour. Overall, I will argue how Gomez's film delivers a message of hope even if it's through displaying difficulties and her former "secrets." I will do this by describing some examples of Gomez's struggles that the film shared with the audience, along with actions Gomez took in the film to bring a positive light to her struggle. Just by opening up about mental health publicly, Gomez, through this documentary, makes a huge difference.
During her time on the Revival Tour, Gomez began to cite anxiety and depression as her main reasons for canceling this massive tour. However, it became clear afterwards that this was not simple anxiety and depression but quite more complex. Director Alek Keshishian gives reminders of the pressures that Gomez faced throughout the documentary. For example, Gomez is shown breaking down due to tour pressure when she states she doesn't feel like things are "good enough", shortly before canceling her tour. She is also seen crying quite often and later delves into how dark her mental health struggles can look.
After canceling her tour, Gomez sought mental health treatment, and she was later diagnosed with one of the most stigmatized mental health challenges, bipolar disorder. Not only that, but Gomez experienced psychosis as one of her symptoms as well. The pressures that Gomez had been shown facing during the tour may have contributed to her experience of psychosis, and her reaction was obviously not ordinary anxiety and depression.
As Gomez's friend Raquelle Stevens best explained in the film, psychosis can last for weeks to months to years and is not something that should be taken lightly. Gomez admits to worrying about what if she never came out of psychosis. As was the case for Gomez, psychosis can cause a person to have hallucinations — where one sees or hears things that aren't there. This can become very terrifying, which it was for Selena, and her friends and family. “I just remember it being very chaotic, and [Gomez] was hearing all of these voices,” said Gomez’s friend Raquelle Stevens in the documentary. According to Gomez, “They just kept getting louder and louder and louder.” Imagine seeing or hearing things that don’t exist–it’s a nightmare. The person in psychosis immediately becomes a fall hazard, because you never know what version of reality they are seeing.
The stigma against bipolar disorder, like many other mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, is massive.
The film My Mind & Me depicts Gomez helping to bring hope and break the stigma of negativity towards those with mental health conditions by speaking at McLean Hospital. At McLean, Gomez admitted to having bipolar disorder for the first time publicly. Keshishian shows Gomez personally reaching out to members of the audience when speaking out about mental health. At McLean, as shown through brief conversations in the documentary, Gomez was truly able to connect one on one with people about mental health. Gomez recalls McLean as “one of the best hospitals” and she recounts how “they're kind of covering everything in the mental health space. So, I was able to say my diagnosis out loud for the first time," Gomez recalled. "And it gave me such strength, and — it wasn't easy.”
Gomez also breaks the stigma surrounding mental health issues, especially bipolar disorder, by addressing its effect on her family. Through Keshishian's footage, Gomez deliberately shows how she grapples with darkness by opening up about some of the ugly parts of having bipolar disorder. In one scene Gomez speaks about having lashed out at her mom and stepdad and admits to having regrets about times when she was not herself and was going into a darker mind frame. Gomez wishes things could have been different, but there is not much she can do. Fortunately enough, Gomez comes from a very understanding family who knows the Selena that lashed out at them is not the real Selena, but rather someone who was sick and was battling against her own emotions.
A day before the documentary came out, Gomez released a song with the same name: “My Mind & Me.” Gomez explains through the first few lyrics what it was like when she felt she had to hide her story, as many with bipolar disorder do. The lyrics exclaim, “Wanna hear a part to my story? I tried to hide in the glory And sweep it under the table so you would never know.” Later on, Gomez sings “If somеbody sees me like this, then thеy won't feel alone now.” Through the song, Gomez explains to her audience that they are not alone, and that she has suffered with her mental health like many of the people watching her have. This song is played at the end credits of the documentary, which leaves the audience feeling inspired.
Keshishian also shares videos of Gomez's diary entries and stylistic photographs of her, and they are effective to a point. Some viewers feel her writing or photoshoot images detract from the overall message of the film. However, it's important to note that a lot of the photoshoot images portrayed in the film, such as Gomez in the rain, are symbolic of her emotions and the strong feeling of sadness that comes along with having bipolar or manic depressive disorder. These forms of art are also a form of expression and serve as reminders of Gomez's passion for sharing her emotions and feelings while raising awareness for mental health. While the photos and diary entries may feel like a distraction for some, they ultimately further the point that Selena is trying to share hope with the audience by expressing her feelings so openly and vulnerably through a wide variety of different mediums.
All in all, Gomez explains her mental health journey throughout her documentary powerfully. I argue that Gomez sharing her mental health story through My Mind & Me brings hope. This message of hope is portrayed through Gomez sharing her emotions about the tour publicly, Gomez having her friend share about her psychosis experience, Gomez speaking at McLean, Gomez opening up about the ugly parts of her disorder at her home, Gomez writing and performing the song, "My Mind & Me", and Gomez’s diary entries as well as photographs. Selena Gomez is not only resilient for dealing with bipolar disorder, but also incredibly strong to share her story in a documentary, knowing that unfortunately, there is a stigma against it. As she says in her song “Who Says,” which elicits new meaning, everyone no matter who they are or what mental health challenge they may face has “Got every right to a beautiful life.”
“Lose You To Love Me: How the Music in My Mind & Me Highlight's Selena Gomez's Journey of Self-Discovery”
S. I. I. Gazard
Selena Gomez has been in the spotlight for more than a decade and has had plenty of hit songs over the years. My Mind and Me (Keshishian, 2022) paints a picture of her career since the release of her 2016 album Revival and the mental and physical health hardships she has endured since then. It was a much different film than what was originally intended, as it started as a tour documentary and instead showed Gomez’ mental breakdown and struggle to build confidence again, as well as get away from her Disney career and discover her own identity as an artist. Much of the visuals are accompanied by selections of Gomez’s music, greatly emphasizing the ideas and thus increasing the impact of the film’s message. The use of music is pivotal to getting the main idea across, because it shows Gomez’s talent and dedication to her craft while also conveying her struggles and how well she hid them from her fans during her 2016 tour and beyond.
The first song of hers used as background music for the film is “Who Says,” combined with some of her vocals from a rehearsal. The song is upbeat with a positive message and lyrics about insecurity and loving oneself, such as “Who says you’re not perfect? Who says you’re not worth it?” The song is played from start to finish, which makes the next segment even more shocking: it’s of Gomez crying with her staff about how she was not good enough during the rehearsal. The use of such a confident and uplifting song directly before this stressful and emotional moment for Gomez is incredibly ironic and cements the idea that even celebrities with millions of fans worry about their self-worth.
The film continues into her actual concert footage on the Revival tour, where she performs her song “Me & the Rhythm” with confidence to an excited crowd, then when she goes into “Who Says” once again, the entire crowd is singing along with her, making her emotional, This specific concert footage does an excellent job showing Gomez’s connection to her fans and how much they enjoy watching her, contrasting with the earlier footage of her crying where she wonders “when she’ll be good enough by herself.” Being known by some as nothing but “Justin Bieber’s ex-girlfriend” was an undeniable source of stress and made her yearn to have an identity of her own.
To illustrate Gomez’s stress buildup on her Revival tour, more footage of her performing is used performing songs like “Me and My Girls,” “Sober,” and “Same Old Love,” each song corresponding to brief shots shown of the paparazzi and the speculation of the tabloids. For example, “Me and My Girls” is accompanied by footage of Gomez partying with her friends alongside recordings of the press gossiping about how she parties too much, might have a drug problem, etc, while “Sober” and “Same Old Love” are partnered with footage of paparazzi incessantly asking Gomez about Justin Bieber and more backstage footage of her breaking down due to feeling like she’s not good enough. The mixing of her performances, miscellaneous footage, and recordings of gossip are an excellent buildup to the announcement that the Revival tour was canceled as Gomez was suffering from depression and panic attacks.
The tone of the documentary shifts dramatically in this moment and it becomes all about Gomez recovering from her breakdown and reflecting on her life thus far. The arguably most impactful song of the documentary and Gomez’s career is used in this segment: her more recent song “Lose You to Love Me,” paired with an emotional montage of some of her childhood home videos, the filming of the music video, and videos of her being hounded by the paparazzi. Gomez says it’s a song about rediscovering oneself, and although it’s a pretty sad song, the way it is used in these moments makes it uplifting and inspiring, since it marks the time in which Gomez makes huge steps in her journey of self-discovery.
The use of “Lose You to Love Me” is so important because of what it represents to both Gomez and the public. In a review by Quinn Moreland for Pitchfork of Gomez’s latest album, Rare, which included “Lose You to Love Me.” Moreland explains how Gomez’s earliest music was “overproduced electropop,” and her album Revival was “the pop star’s beginning of a transition away from Disney incorruptibility towards songwriting that better represented the crossroads at which she found herself.” Indeed, Revival differed from her past hits and had a darker tone. Moreland remarks that “it seemed like the work she put into her physical and emotional wellness had clicked” when Gomez released “Lose You to Love Me.” The use of it in the middle of the film to underline her recovery is even more significant when considering how her identity as a musician has evolved over the years.
Moreland also comments on how Rare displays Gomez’s vocal growth, describing her vocal quality as “low and breathy” and in Rare, “Gomez seems to have a grasp on her range and mainly sticks to a husky, bedroom-eyes murmur instead of attempting bravado.” My Mind and Me makes it very obvious that Gomez wants to get away from her Disney channel career and reputation as Justin Bieber’s ex, but her fight to escape those is far from over. Although Ranker lists Revival as the best Selena Gomez album and Rare as the second best, many other rankings of her albums appear to be done by nostalgic fans who are focused on Gomez’s Disney career and not the quality of her music, so other websites such as Allmusic put Revival in last place with the album Kiss & Tell from the height of her Disney channel stardom in first. The only song used in the documentary from her Disney period was “Who Says?”, and although Gomez is trying to get away from her Disney career, the inclusion of this song was a nice nod to it, because it’s still an important part of her career that contributed to her current stardom. The use of mostly recent songs and one of her most powerful songs yet proves that My Mind and Me is not a biographical film about Selena Gomez: it’s more of a documentation of how she’s strayed away from what used to define her and how she’s established herself as an an artist. Here’s hoping it helps her leave the past behind and be her authentic self, and that she keeps making music for years to come.
"Good Enough By Myself: Selena Gomez's Quest for Adult Identity"
Leilei S.
Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me, directed by Alek Keshishian, the director of the iconic Madonna: Truth or Dare, follows the life of Selena Gomez from 2015 to 2021, focusing on her struggle with her mental and physical health. The film’s narrative begins with the preparations for and the early days of her “Revival” tour, which is interrupted by a nervous breakdown, when she is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. The film resumes in 2019, and by then Gomez seems to have achieved a sense of well-being and adjustment to her challenges. However, things go very wrong when the charity she has begun to work with is exposed as corrupt, her lupus flares up, and she becomes increasingly frustrated with the Hollywood workflow of travel, “glam”, and senseless interviews. The audience might be conditioned to expect an unambiguously triumphant conclusion, in which Gomez emerges healthy in body and mind. But this film is more nuanced, and the film concludes with her acknowledging that her struggles will continue, with her learning more and more how to manage them and make peace with them. Doing this requires that she confront her childhood, especially how she experienced fame as she was growing up.
But in the film’s first 30 minutes, the audience sees the extraordinary amount of stress the star is under as a young adult, when, in tears, she says,“The pressure is just overwhelming because I wanna do the best I can.” She goes further, saying, “I don’t want to disappoint John, I don’t want him to think he signed some fucking Disney kid.” “Disney kid” refers to the many other music performers who started out as child stars, including Britney Spears, Demi Lovato, Miley Cyrus, the Jonas Brothers, and more–children who got their big breaks, and spent their formative years, on the Disney Channel. Although Disney was her conduit to stardom, it’s obvious Gomez–like so many previous “Disney kids”, wants to be seen for who she is as a person now, not who she was in the past.
Who she was–her identity from childhood through adolescence– is complex. The film shows Gomez in a return to her Texas hometown, where she hangs out with her cousins, stops in at her old middle school, and visits an elderly woman who used to let her play with her dollhouse. But the sweetness of these reunions is undercut by some harsh realities. Gomez was born to a 16 year old mom, and her dad left the family when she was 5 years old. And from the age of 7, Gomez had an alternate home and family, as the audience sees when she fondly recalls her grandmother, looking at an old photo:, “She was taking a photo, I’m looking at myself in the mirror, and that’s when I found out I booked Barney. I was seven years old when I got my first job. I was proud because I got to escape my life and be in Barney land and just play and sing.” Gomez here indicates that when her career began, it was a form of play for her–she was developmentally at a stage where she could imaginatively live her “role” as a Barney kid.
From then on, Gomez was in the spotlight. From her starring role on the Disney Channel show “Wizards of Waverly Place” as Alex Russo, a young wizard living in New York City, experiencing magical situations along with typical growing up problems, to recurring roles on “Suite Life of Zack and Cody” and “Hannah Montana”, to roles in Disney films like “Monte Carlo”, “Another Cinderella Story”, and “Hotel Transylvania,” she experienced the scrutiny of the public. At the same time, Gomez was visibly maturing, and, as other Disney kids have, undoubtedly began to chafe at Disney’s policy of preserving the public perception of its stars’ youthful innocence as long as possible. In the last part of the film, fed up with what she has to do to promote her latest album in London, Gomez complains that her outfit “makes me feel like Disney. I fuckin’ look like a witch with the outfit, doing the wand again,” referring to her role on Wizards of Waverly Place. There is not a lot of overt criticism of Disney in the film, but the references to it establish that Gomez doesn’t have positive feelings about her experience as part of its stable of child stars.
Her steps toward maturity continued under the eye of the media. From the age of 18 to 26, Gomez had an on again off again relationship with singer Justin Bieber. While Gomez doesn’t openly address the relationship, it’s a thread throughout the film, as paparazzi are constantly shouting out “How’s Justin?” or “How do you feel about Justin’s new girlfriend?”, and “Did Justin make you go to rehab?” The audience can’t help but wonder how enduring the breakup and then being constantly reminded of it affected her mental health. Throughout the documentary, we see how much her past relationship invokes a version of her she no longer wishes to be, as she tearfully asks “When am I gonna just be good enough by myself?”
While her past experiences obviously led to self doubt and negativity, the film demonstrates that Gomez is able to use them as creative material, as we see how many of her songs come from those memories, such as “Lose You to Love Me”, which she states was her fastest written song, and “Who Says”, which, when an audience sings along with her, visibly moves her. Some creative choices she makes to escape her Disney little girl persona, however, seem to lead to more trauma. As she prepares for her “Revival” tour, she rehearses overtly sexy dance moves, catered to the male gaze, which seems to be the only way she feels she can indicate she’s an adult. In “The Disney Curse” psychologist Dr. Linda Papadapoulos relates this tendency, also seen in Disney stars like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato, to the way these women grew up–”They had an identity they were able to profit from and get a sense of validation from. Once that changes, you don’t have that same value and you feel it. And that is why we see young stars becoming hyper-sexualized–they want to be taken seriously as adult.” The film shows Gomez fussing over her costumes, eventually complaining that she doesn’t want to look like a 12 year old boy, and then pointing out that “if I was a guy, I could just change t shirts.”
By the end of the film, Gomez reaches a state where she’s able to get her mental and physical health under control, leaving the audience to marvel that anyone who has endured such a public coming of age can find the courage and stamina to address her mental health while still maintaining an entertainment career. Gomez is upfront about her struggle, and about wanting to use her platform to help others who are also struggling with mental health issues, but the film shows us it’s not a risk-free position. We see her advised that “you don’t have to say bipolar”. That Gomez chooses to be open about her diagnosis is an indication of her innate inner strength.
As difficult as her childhood was, that strength has its roots there, in her family. Gomez relates how, when she was afraid of thunder in early childhood, her mom got her books from the library about thunderstorms, telling her that the more she learned about what she feared, the less she would be afraid. Gomez has used this lesson to become informed about her health challenges, and this approach, of learning as much as she can about what she fears, has served her well in dealing with growing up as a child star, and maturing in the public eye. And yet, we have to wonder if the media and her fans will accept her authentic self. When Gomez tells an interviewer in London that she wants ultimately to be a philanthropist, to do good in the world, she is angered by the interviewer’s not paying attention to that. Her anger seems to be a healthy response to a public that clings to a persona that doesn’t fit Gomez anymore.
Though outside the scope of this film, Gomez has progressed to serious film roles in Spring Breakers and The Big Short, and a starring role in the TV series Only Murders in the Building. She has taken real steps toward that philanthropy goal, donating part of her proceeds from her beauty line, Rare, to providing mental health services in underserved communities. Gomez is clearly intelligent and has the capacity for self-analysis, and Selena Gomez: My Mind and Me shows us the sometimes messy process as Gomez cautiously but deliberately navigates the transition from a manufactured childhood through personal crisis to greater personal authenticity.