Supergirl's Chyler Leigh Reveals Bipolar Disorder Diagnosis

Chyler Leigh is opening up about her diagnosis with bipolar disorder for the first time.

The 37-year-old Supergirl actress was diagnosed with the disorder almost 10 years ago, but she is speaking publicly about it for the first time.

Chyler told People about her “very, very difficult journey” to manage the disorder, which her mom also faced while she was growing up.

“My mother was diagnosed with — at the time they were calling it manic depression — and I saw such an extreme version,” she said. “Because I saw what happens when you aren’t advocating for yourself or taking care of yourself, when I first got the bipolar diagnosis it was sort of like, ‘Oh my gosh, if that was me, how on Earth am I going to deal with this?’ Am I in the same place? Am I equipped? Do I have what it takes to actually really genuinely take care of myself?’”

Chyler talked about how her kids are also dealing with mental health conditions.

“We have three kids that are also living with either a mental health condition — we have ADHD, we have Asperger’s, high-functioning autism — that’s all of my three kids. So that, [and my] career, trying to make [our] marriage work, dealing with all these symptoms and not knowing what to do with it, that’s where I kinda hit my breaking point and I shut down completely,” she said. “During that point, right before I was diagnosed, I was like, ‘I’m drowning, I’m drowning.’”

Chyler is speaking out as part of the Be Vocal: Speak Up for Mental Health campaign.

“I’ve always been a very kind of private person,” she said. “I think mostly because of being afraid of having my story out there and being labeled as anything because there is very often such a negative stigma about it. That fear of judgment and ‘Oh, if people see me this way, that means that I’m not good enough or I’m not well enough to be able to take care of myself’ or whatever it might be. But, being able to have a fantastic platform to be able to speak my story and know that it’s going to reach a tremendous amount of people, that was major motivation for me [to speak out].”