She was a high-flying, ambitious, mother, wife and healthcare strategist. On a flight home from meetings in Saudi Arabia, she had what she thought was a heart attack. It turned out to be a panic attack and it turned her life upside down. “I’d dealt with depression all my life — since I was three… I overcompensated by achievement,” she tells Lesley Jane Seymour, founder of CoveyClub.com. “I didn’t want to admit my imperfections.” Using psychotherapy, prayer, medication, exercise, meditation, and yoga, Chopra has “learned to be more compassionate with herself.” Chopra speaks nationally and internationally about raising awareness of mental illness and how it impacts policy changes at the corporate level. “Why can’t we be vulnerable?” she asks.
Chopra recommends NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness) as a good starting point for your research.