Lady Gaga opens up on how she found herself after mental health issues, says 'really lucky to be alive'

Lady Gaga recently opened up about one of the hardest years of her life. In a recent exclusive interview with Rolling Stone, the popstar addressed how she had almost lost herself and that she is ‘lucky to be alive again.’

Lady Gaga: ‘I feel really lucky to be alive’

Lady Gaga has offered her most candid account yet of the years in which her global stardom collided with deep personal crisis, revealing the psychological toll of success and the long path to creative renewal.

She opened up about the psychotic break she experienced and how did ‘A Star Is Born’ on Lithium. "There was one day that my sister said to me, ‘I don’t see my sister anymore,’ ” she says. “And I canceled the tour. There was one day I went to the hospital for psychiatric care. I needed to take a break. I couldn’t do anything. I completely crashed. It was really scary. There was a time where I didn’t think I could get better.  I feel really lucky to be alive. I know that might sound dramatic, but we know how this can go.”

Lady Gaga talks about her fiancé, Michael Polansky

She started doing better, thanks to her fiancé Michael Polansky, a Harvard-educated entrepreneur. “Being in love with someone that cares about the real me made a very big difference,” she says.

But that meant she had to figure out just who that was: “How do you learn how to be yourself with someone when you don’t know how to be yourself with anyone?”

It is obvious that she answered the question by finding just the right person for herself, who has always seen her for her true self and not just for being THE Lady Gaga.

She recently made ‘Mayhem’, which is up for seven Grammys, including Album of the Year. Talking about the album, Gaga said, "It was months and months and months of rediscovering everything that I’d lost. And I honestly think that’s why it’s called Mayhem. Because what it took to get it back was crazy.”

Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, talked about how Michael has to help her through her panic attacks right before her shows. She said, “I see all the fans and I’m in this big dress, and the music is so loud and it’s very dramatic … and for 90 seconds, I have to talk myself out of a panic attack.”

About ‘Mayhem’

Mayhem is the sixth solo studio album by singer-songwriter Lady Gaga, and her eighth overall. It was released on March 7, 2025 through Streamline and Interscope Records. Created in collaboration with producers including Andrew Watt, Cirkut and Gesaffelstein, the record unfolds as a “chaotic blur of genres”, rooted primarily in synth-pop while drawing on industrial dance, electro, disco, funk, industrial pop, rock and pop rock.

Lyrically, the album delves into themes of love, chaos, fame, identity and desire, employing metaphors of transformation, duality and excess. The visual identity of the era embraced a dark, avant-garde style, influenced by gothic and cyberpunk aesthetics.