Amanda Seyfried Admits That She Has OCD

Famous people don’t have to talk about the heavy details about their personal life. Like, I don’t think there’s anyone out there wondering if Channing Tatum has IBS and why isn’t he talking about. So Amanda Seyfried could have spent her whole recent interview with Allure talking about her dog Finn, which I for one would have appreciated greatly, or trying to dodge questions about the exact date she got together with her fiancé. But instead she talked about the mental illness stuff she’s been dealing with.

Amanda tells Allure that she was diagnosed with OCD after struggling with anxiety-related shit back in the day. Amanda says she was so anxious and worried, and had convinced herself she had a brain tumor. She had an MRI done and when that came back clean, the neurologist sent her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist determined she had OCD and put her on Lexapro. She’s been on Lexapro for 11 years and that’s not something she’s ashamed of.

“Yeah. I’m on Lexapro, and I’ll never get off of it. I’ve been on it since I was 19, so 11 years. I’m on the lowest dose. I don’t see the point of getting off of it. Whether it’s placebo or not, I don’t want to risk it. And what are you fighting against? Just the stigma of using a tool? A mental illness is a thing that people cast in a different category [from other illnesses], but I don’t think it is. It should be taken as seriously as anything else. You don’t see the mental illness: It’s not a mass; it’s not a cyst. But it’s there.”

Amanda has been on Lexapro since 2005, which means she wasn’t on it during the making of Mean Girls a year earlier. I’m sure there were parts of that experience that were probably very hard for someone who was dealing with OCD. I mean, imagine having OCD and being invited by Lindsay Lohan to hang out in her trailer? If Mean Girls-era Lindsay had the housekeeping competency of post-Mean Girls Lindsay, then there’s a 100% chance that trailer was a disgusting, disorganized mess. Even people without OCD probably left that trailer with the urge to wash their hands 10 times.

Here’s Amanda working some vintage Etsy clothing store product shots in Allure.

Pics: Scott Trindle for Allure