Hrithik Roshan spoke at the launch of M Power’s ‘Everyday Heroes’ campaign which urges people to accept and fight with mental illnesses.

The 42-year-old star said that he has gone through many ups and downs in his personal life and has experienced depression. He says urges people to not stigmatize it.

“I’ve been through my ups and downs. I have experienced depression; I have experienced confusion, as we all do. It’s a very normal thing. We should be very casual about it when we speak about it. It should be spoken about casually,” he said.

Continuing, the Dil Dhadkne Do actor said that, “I have experienced issue in my own personal life; we all go through ups and downs. The ups are important, the downs are (also) important because you evolve through both of them.”

“When you go through a down then the most important thing is clarity of thought. Sometimes your brain takes over, feeds you with unwanted thoughts. That’s the time you need objectivity, a third or second person to look at you and say ‘this is what is happening to you”. This is something which was on my mind for years. I always questioned this stigma (around mental illness). I have seen my friends suffer in silence and it bothered me to a level where I started asking questions and stumbled upon some very good questions in that search,” the Bang Bang! star said.

“About, why when we are suffering from stomach or kidney problem, we are so cool and casual about it. Why when we have a problem with brain, which is also an organ, we get scared and feel as if it is our fault and we need to hide it from people. Everybody at some point of life is going to go through some mental issue,” he concluded.

Hrithik started his career as a mainstream Bollywood actor in Kaho Na Pyar Hai in 2000 which was very successful.