'I had a mental health scare’: Imran Khan on the wake-up call that made him seek help, says there's need for awareness - Exclusive

Imran Khan has been vocal about his mental health journey just so he can also help someone else who is going through it. The actor who was recently seen onscreen after 11 years in a cameo in 'Happy Patel' has finished shooting for a film. He will make his comeback with 'Adhoore Hum Adhoore Tum' co-starring Bhumi Pednekar and directed by Danish Aslam. In an exclusive chat with ETimes, as Imran opened up on his divorce and mental health journey, he revealed what made him realise it and seek help.

Though, he admits that he never had any issues in opening up about it. "Back then, you know even as recently as 8-10 years ago, there was still a lot of baggage and a lot of stigma around even having the conversation about mental health. I didn't have that so there was no hurdle to overcome. Rather it was my own sense of' I'm not feeling good' that I was able to define it and pinpoint it as 'I don't feel like I am the version of myself which I see in my head'."




Explaining further as to how he felt so different, he said, "If someone were to ask me hey tell me. about yourself I would have described myself in a certain way that I see myself as a really chill easygoing guy I don't carry a lot of baggage age. I don't take stress, my self-image was, I'm a really chill guy. But I realised that I whatever I think of myself, I'm not actually that guy. If I look at the way I was interacting with the world at that point was different and it was not lining up with who think I am. I was interacting with the world out of a sense of great fear and trepidation, tremendous crippling anxiety. It was the exact opposite of easy going, chill guy."



Imran spoke about the importance of conversations around mental health and said, "Everyone is grappling with issues of mental health because it is as much a part of your body as physical health. The conversation around physical health is far more. We're like, "Oh, you should not have carbs and you should take fish oils and you know whatever the all of this to look after your body." You have to look after your mind in just as much of the same way. It's just we have a greater discomfort around it. So, for me because I didn't have the that discomfort, I could really look at it and say, 'Okay, these are not lining up.'"

The 'Break Ke Baad' actor admitted mental health needs to be given equal importance as physical health. "I had a mental health scare. You can talk you know people have health scares. They're like suddenly something goes wrong like I'm going to change my diet. I'm going to change my lifestyle. Oh it's all boiled vegetables. And I had a mental health scare. I looked at I said none of this is right. I have to address this consciously. The way that you would start caring for your body if you suddenly had a health issue. I was like this is a health needed. I have to engage with it consciously."

He also clarified that while rumours suggest that he had mental health issues, because of his divorce, that's not the truth. Imran expressed that divorce was actually the beginning of his healing as he was in a bad state in the last few years of his marriage with Avantika Malik. "During my analysis, I realised that my dynamic with my partner was unhealthy. It was a relationship that started at a very young age and when you were 18 19 years old you don't have nearly enough life experience to have an understanding of what are healthy interpersonal dynamics and what are unhealthy dynamics."

Imran added, "In this context, I understood that it's not happening that way, it is not working that way and in order for myself to be the healthiest best version of myself I have to remove myself from this relationship. I don't blame anyone for this. I've not been in the media. I've been out of public sight and in the absence of me actually being there and speaking, rumors, gossip, all of this stuff kind of speculation just goes about, so things get muddled and conflated. Within that, I think a lot of people took my divorce to be the thing that was uh impactful for me and that I was impacted by by the separation that that triggered a mental health crisis. The truth is far from it. I was infact in the worst years of it during the last couple of years of my marriage. It is my making the choice to end my marriage that was the turning point in my personal mental health journey that that allowed me to actually heal and get better. It is because we were not we were not in sync. We were not able to support each other being the best version of self."Get the latest entertainment updates from the Times of India, along with the latest Hindi movies, upcoming Hindi movies in 2026 , and Telugu movies.”