DONT FORGET TO SHARE 😊

Share this story

FOX NEWS

Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., faced off against his Democrat

E NEWS

Watch: ‘The Golden Life’ Official Trailer | New Series

SPORTS ILLUSTRATED

The Texas Longhorns are looking healthy before hosting the

Portable Bluetooth Speaker
Outdoor Travel Essentials

Jinger Duggar Shares Mom Michelle’s Reaction to Her Eating Disorder

Watch: Jinger Duggar Reveals Why She Hasn’t Celebrated Christmas With Her Family in 9 Years

Content warning: This story discusses eating disorders.

Jinger Duggaris sharing how she dealt with a difficult time in her life.

The 19 Kids and Counting alum opened up about how she struggled with an eating disorder as a teen due to constant stress, but explained how her mom Michelle Duggar ultimately helped her heal.

“I had so much stress in my body that I almost physically was feeling sick,” Jinger told sister JoyDuggar on the Oct. 14 episode of their Call Your Sister podcast. “There was so much that I was processing through and I was really stressed.”

Jinger—who shares kids Felicity, 8, Evangeline, 6, and Finnegan, 18 months, with husband JeremyVuolo—explained that her eating disorder manifested in food avoidance.

“I would try to sleep in as late as I could, so I would not have to eat breakfast,” she said, “and I’d try to make it through lunch and then try to not eat lunch.”

photos

The Complete Duggar Family Tree

The 32-year-old added that it was easy to hide the fact that she was skipping meals, not due to familial neglect, but because of the way the Duggar family had set up meal times.

“We would eat dinner, more dinners together as a family than we would lunch and breakfast,” Jinger said. “So I think that I was slipping through the cracks in a sense.”

Jinger finally reached a breakthrough when she was on a group trip and saw someone who was struggling with bulimia.

Jinger Duggar/Instagram

“She was literally sickly and she had so many health issues and she looked terrible because her body was withering away. She was in a terrible place,” Jinger recalled. “Ultimately I was looking at her and I’m like, ‘Just stop doing that,’ as I’m over here doing the same thing in a different way.”

Once she had the realization, she confided in her mother Michelle, who met her “with such grace and kindness,” sharing that she had struggled with an eating disorder in her younger years.

“She said, ‘But good thing is you’re talking, you’re going to be fine.’ I was so reassured knowing that because I said that, she was not like, ‘Oh my goodness, here’s three cheeseburgers, eat them all,’” Jinger explained. “She was like, ‘No, it’s OK. You can eat healthy food and be healthy.’ But she also said, ‘You don’t need to avoid food because that’s gonna harm your body later.’”

Jinger Duggar/Instagram

Michelle helped her daughter get on “an accountability track,” giving her a cellphone so she and Jinger could message back and forth about what she was eating.

Still, that’s not to say getting to a good place didn’t take time.

“It was hard in those years,” Jinger admitted, “because I had to mentally get to a place where I was like, ‘OK, I am not gonna focus on that. I wanna focus on having a healthy relationship with food.’”

Overall, Jinger looks back on the stress as part of being “in those teenage years.”

“It was not healthy,” she said. “I was in a terrible place in my mind thinking of how I viewed myself.”

For more stars who have been open about their own health struggles, keep reading.

Franklin Sheard/Fad Media Group/Shutterstock

Gucci ManeThe rapper (real name Radric Davis) revealed in his October 2025 book Episodes: The Diary of a Recovering Mad Man that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which prompted a mental health episode in 2020.“After that, I was like, ‘Man, I got to really just hold myself accountable and take care of my health,’” he said on an episode of The Breakfast Club. “I don’t never want to have an episode again. I’m gonna see a therapist, [even] if I have to take medicine.” In addition to his hope that his vulnerability would help others in need, Gucci Mane said that his kids Ice Davis and Iceland Ka’oirDavis with wife Keyshia Ka’Oir inspired him to seek help amid his episode.“My wife was pregnant with my little boy,” he continued. “I don’t want to raise a family and then my mental health [is] gone. What if I have an episode I can’t come back from? So, I just started doing the work and started seeking help.”

Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Planet Hollywood

Milania GiudiceIn October 2026, the daughter of Teresa Giudice and Joe Giudice shared she was getting treatment for bipolar disorder in a candid update about her mental health journey.”I do struggle with mental health issues,” Milania told followers in an Oct. 12 Instagram video. “I am bipolar. I struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD and ADHD and I am not ashamed of any of my mental health disorders because I’m currently at a treatment center, my mom’s on her way to come visit me today.”The then-20-year-old added that “this summer hit me like a bus” after Milania was arrested for assault in May and her best friend Victoria Zardoya died suddenly in July. “A lot of things happened in a short amount of time and I’m trying to just process everything,” the University of Tampa student noted. “It’s really hard being in the public light while you go through things in life.”

Sansho Scott/BFA.com/Shutterstock

Penn BadgleyThe Gossip Girl alum detailed his experience as a child actor with what he described as “body dysmorphia.”“I know that I hated my body,” Penn told The Guardianin April 2025, “and simply wanted a different one.”In response to the weight he gained following his parents’ divorce, he added, “There was just a period where, coming out of depression and isolation, I was jumping wilfully into, but also being thrust into, this world where the more conventionally beautiful I seemed, the more successful I might be, the more value I might have.”Despite the mental struggles, though, Penn credited his ability to persist to his spirituality.“That is what allowed me to persevere through the disillusionment, all the things I’d been grappling with,” he explained, “and then come back to it all, but with hopefully some kind of inner transformation.”

John Salangsang/Shutterstock

Eliza CoupeThe Scrubs alum has been vocal about her past difficult relationship with food.“Some may call it an eating disorder, I just call it my life,” she said on the The Funny Thing Is podcast. “My drug of choice was always food. I did crazy s–t with it.”She added, “I would over-exercise, and there was a sprinkle of bulimia in there.”Though she has confessed her struggles with her diet, she has also shared her progress with her health and fitness goals.“When I was 23, I cut all sugar out of my diet, quit drinking, and found yoga and breathing and stretching,” she told Bon Appétitin 2017. “That’s the best Ritalin you could give anyone.” She continued, “I’m an actress with food issues and body image issues—that’s real. But I’m trying to heal that part of myself and also handle my physical issues naturally by putting the best things into my body.”

River Callaway/Variety via Getty Images

Candace Cameron BureThe Full House alum reflected on her mental health journey and navigating her battle with depression.”It’s very difficult to speak out about it, even to your most trusted people,” she shared on her Candace Cameron Bure Podcast. “At least for me, I feel like I should be strong enough to overcome that and then it feels so weak.”

David Fisher/Shutterstock

Billie EilishThe Grammy winner has been very open about how she protects her energy, such as ignoring haters on social media, while also sharing her advice for those who may need help. “When people ask me what I’d say to somebody looking for advice on mental health, the only thing I can say is patience,” she told Vogue. “I had patience with myself. I didn’t take that last step. I waited. Things fade.”

Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

Katy PerryWhile everyone was trying to make the best of socially distancing to slow the coronavirus pandemic, the “Firework” artist got real about how situations like this can also be extremely stressful.”Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse trying to avoid the virus or the waves of depression that come with this new norm,” she shared on Twitter. Katy talked about how she manages those waves, writing, “There is not really anywhere to go besides my car. So I go to my car a lot. That is my safe space.”

Christopher Smith/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Kendall JennerThe model, who teamed up with designer Kenneth Cole to raise awareness for The Mental Health Coalition, spoke on Good Morning America about her own experiences with anxiety.She recalled after her panic attacks started recurring, she, “finally kind of got the information that I needed about it.””For me, I have good days and I have some really anxious days, so I’m really off and on,” Kendall expressed, adding that was why she wanted to become involved with the movement. “What I hope to accomplish is for people to not feel as alone.”

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images

Dwayne JohnsonThe Black Adam actor has been open about having depression and how it can be difficult for men to talk about their mental health.”We all go thru the sludge/shit and depression never discriminates. Took me a long time to realize it but the key is to not be afraid to open up,” he wrote on Twitter. “Especially us dudes have a tendency to keep it in. You’re not alone.”

Tim Rooke/Shutterstock

Prince HarryThe Duke of Sussex helped break down some of the stigma around seeking help for mental health when, in an interview with the Telegraph, he opened up about his own journey with therapy. As he told the outlet, “The experience I have had is that once you start talking about it, you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club.”

Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP

Taraji P. HensonAnother proponent of seeking professional help, the Empire star has been open about her struggles with depression.”I have a therapist that I speak to,” she previously told Variety. “That’s the only way I can get through it.”Taraji even started The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, which works to reduce the stigma around mental health in the African American community and also works to increase the number of Black therapists.

Matt Baron/Shutterstock

The Grammy winner explained that experiences with an eating disorder and stage freight led her to start a form of PTSD treatment called MDMA and and psilocybin therapy.“I was touring without stage fright for the first time,” she told Rolling Stone in May 2025. “There was a hook around my guts and everyone in the room was having the same feeling, [like] there’d been a huge pressure change. It made me realize how much I love and kind of need that very deep, visceral response to feel my music.”She added that her renewed focus on her mental health, as well as her decision to stop taking birth control, caused her understanding of her own gender to become “more expansive.”“I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity,” she continued. “It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity. And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.”

Evan Agostini/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

Lili Reinhart”When I was in middle school, I was struggling with severe anxiety and depression and the help and support I received from my family and a therapist saved my life,” the Riverdale actresswrote on Instagram in 2017. “Asking for help is the first step. You are more precious to this world than you’ll ever know.”

(Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images)

Carly PearceThe “What He Didn’t Do” singer shared insight into what her life has been like during her yearslong battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).“I would have told you three years ago my anxiety started during my divorce in Covid,” Carly said an August 2025 episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast. “But I’ve had crippling OCD since I was a child.”“I got really conditioned over the last 10 years to just zip it up and deal with it, and it just kind of got to a place where a couple years ago I just had to really start back into therapy, start really, like, trying to figure out all of these different things,” she continued. “Like, recognizing OCD was something—no, that didn’t come in 2020, that’s been there since I was 6 or 7.”

Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Kristen BellThe Frozen star has talked for years about her strategies for coping with her mental health at public keynotes and even on her Instagram Stories.She has advocated for finding the methods that help you best, which for her, according to Health, can include medication, listing ten positive things in her life for every negative thought and getting plenty of exercise.

Matt Baron/Shutterstock

Chrissy TeigenWhile the cookbook author is the proud parent to four kiddos, she’s also been open about postpartum depression that many new mothers experience but feel like they cannot talk about.”It got easier and easier to say it aloud every time,” she wrote in an open letter to Glamour in 2017. “I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone.”

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Cara DelevingneWhile promoting her book Mirror, Mirror, the model opened up to The Edit magazine about facing depression and suicidal thoughts as a teenager, saying she felt “something dark” in her during that time.”I relied too much on love, too much on other people to make me happy, and I needed to learn to be happy by myself,” Cara told the publication, via W. “So now I can be by myself, I can be happy. It took me a long time.”

Erik Pendzich/Shutterstock

Ariana GrandeThe “Thank U, Next” artist has encouraged fans to seek help if they need, responding to a Twitter user who joked about wondering whoAriana’s therapist is with, “lmaoaoo this is funny as f–k but in all honesty therapy has saved my life so many times.””If you’re afraid to ask for help, don’t be,” she continued. “u don’t have to be in constant pain & u can process trauma. I’ve got a lot of work to do but it’s a start to even be aware that it’s possible.”

Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

Demi LovatoThe singer has been open about her journey with addiction, sobriety, mental health and more, including many of those aspects of her life within her music.She also continually reminds fans that working on your mental health is an ongoing process where there will be some bad days, previously writing on Instagram, “A reminder to anyone struggling out there – this life is a journey with tons of ups and downs but you can’t give up.”

John Salangsang/Shutterstock

ZendayaNot only has the actress taken on roles that deal with mental health, such as her role as Rue in the teen drama Euphoria, she’s also addressed those issues in her own life, too.Back in 2013, Zendaya wrote on her now-defunct app that she struggled with anxiety after an appearance on Ellen where her mic went out. She has since learned ways to manage those feelings, adding, “Sometimes you just have to take a step back so things stop stressin’ you.”

Rob Latour/REX/Shutterstock

Selena GomezThe singer candidly described her mental health journey with WSJ Magazine, saying, “My highs were really high, and my lows would take me out for weeks at a time.””I found out I do suffer from mental health issues,” she shared. “I got on the right medication, and my life has been completely changed.”

Steve Granitz/WireImage

Lady GagaThe Grammy winner made it her mission to spread kindness and be open about mental health, including her own.”I have struggled for a long time, both being public and not public about my mental health issues or my mental illness,” she said during the Global Changemakers Award at Children Mending Hearts’ Empathy Rocks fundraiser in 2018. “But, I truly believe that secrets keep you sick.”

If you or someone you know needs help, please call the National Eating Disorders Association helpline at 1-800-931-2237.

Click to Follow saysit.net on