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Former Vanderpump Rules star Scheana Shay has opened up about her experience with depression in recent months. Shay, who just competed on The Masked Singer, said she began to experience symptoms of depression after appearing on the show. She shared how she has come to terms with that despite her life seeming outwardly perfect.

Scheana Shay revealed she has dealt with depression for the past several months

When Shay received an offer to appear on The Masked Singer, her first instinct was to turn it down.

“I immediately was like, ‘Hard pass, absolutely not,’” she said on her Scheananigans podcast (via The Daily Mail), adding, “I didn’t care how much money they’re paying me. I was not going to go on another show on national television just to get made fun of.”

Ultimately, though, she wanted to face her fears and put herself out of her “comfort zone” by going on the show. While she felt proud of herself for this decision, she admitted she broke down following her elimination during the first episode.

After filming the show, she also went through several “heavy months,” partly due to the Los Angeles wildfires. She tried to manage these feelings with medication.

“I just was like, ‘Maybe I up my meds a little bit,’” she said. “But then I started grinding my teeth a lot at night. So I’m like, ‘No, I’ll just go back to like 25 mg.’ As if that’s enough Zoloft for anyone. It’s not. I’ve learned that and I’m now at 75 mg and considering 100 mg.”

She also had to work through complicated feelings about the Vanderpump Rules reboot. 

“But then the show getting rebooted… that’s a huge chapter of my life that now is just done,” she said. “As happy as I was for honestly that chapter to be done, I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s been a huge part of my identity that now is just done.’ A combination of these things just led to me kind of going into a depression.”

Shay cried as she spoke about her difficult few months. Still, she said she wanted to speak publicly about her depression to help others who might be struggling.

“Everything is great but mentally it hasn’t been,” she said. “I just wanted to open up about that because I feel like you could have everything in the world and still not always feel completely happy. I just wanted to normalize it.”

She previously revealed a diagnosis of postpartum OCD

In 2023, Shay revealed her diagnosis of postpartum Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder following the birth of her daughter, Summer Moon, in 2021.

“I feel like the amount of work I’ve been doing in therapy with learning I have postpartum OCD, I feel so much more confident as a mom,” she said on Page Six’s Virtual Reali-Tea podcast. “It’s something that I’ve been talking about a lot on my podcast lately, just because I feel like a lot of women will get misdiagnosed with postpartum depression when it’s postpartum OCD.”

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Shay said she talked to her therapist when she started having intrusive thoughts about her daughter.

“That’s the thing with OCD is that it attaches to your biggest fears and then you just see them happening all of the time and it’s terrifying,” she said. “But I just have to tell myself, ‘This isn’t going to happen, it’s not going to happen, you got this.’”

She urged new parents who might be experiencing similar symptoms to talk to their doctor. After working with a therapist, she began to feel “so much better.”

Scheana Shay’s ‘Vanderpump Rules’ co-star also spoke about her experience with depression

Shay’s Vanderpump Rules co-star and friend, Ariana Madix, has also opened up about her depression.

“I had these, like, big, huge life goals that I have achieved, like the house, the book. And I thought that was gonna fix me,” she said on the show. “But it didn’t change who I am, and this undercurrent, this depression, is, I’m realizing, probably always going to be a part of me and a part of my life.”

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