Selena Gomez Is 'Feeling Empowered' After Completing Treatment for Anxiety & Depression: Source
After a stressful year, Selena Gomez is putting her health first and recently sought treatment for depression and anxiety, PEOPLE confirms.
“She felt like she needed to get away and focus on herself with no distractions,” says a source close to Gomez. “She came back feeling very empowered.”
According to The Blast (which was first to report the news), the singer, 25, completed a two-week program in New York City where she stayed on-site at the center and underwent therapy, ate healthy meals and took pilates and meditation sessions.
“She wants to go again later this year,” adds the source. “She feels and looks great. She’s still working on new music and is excited about it.”
According to the source, Gomez’s on-again beau Justin Bieber was supportive of her decision to seek treatment but “she did this for herself.” The star was spotted cheering on Bieber at his hockey team on Wednesday in Los Angeles.
“After all the noise that happened over the holidays, she felt like she needed this,” says the source. In December, multiple sources told PEOPLE Gomez was not currently speaking to her mom Mandy Teefey.
This isn’t the first time Gomez has taken a break to focus on her health. In August 2016, Gomez announced she was stepping away from the spotlight to “focus on maintaining my health and happiness” after suffering from “anxiety, panic attacks and depression” as side effects of her lupus.
The entertainer — who underwent a kidney transplant with an organ donated by her longtime friend Francia Raisa last summer — has gotten increasingly candid about her struggles with mental health and the challenges she’s faced growing up in the spotlight.
“It’s a lonely journey to really figure out where all this stuff is coming from. And to detach from it. It becomes an addiction, it becomes a habit, retraining your mind to not go to these negative places when you say something wrong, do something wrong, when you wear a certain thing or represent a certain culture,” she told The Business of Fashion last year about staying positive and healthy. “But it is lonely, I had to lose a lot of people in my life to get there.”
Gomez also took a break in 2013 in the midst of her Stars Dance tour and later revealed to Billboard she underwent chemotherapy as treatment for her lupus during that time.
In her first public appearance after her career break in 2016, Gomez got emotional onstage at the American Music Awards when thanking her fans for their unwavering support.
“I think it’s safe to say that all of you know my life whether I like it or not. I had to stop because I had everything and I was absolutely broken inside,” she told the audience. “I kept it all together enough to where I would never let you down but I kept it too much together to where I let myself down. If you are broken, you do not have to stay broken.”
