Kanye West Says He’s “Deeply Mortified” in Apology for Antisemitic Comments

Kanye West—who has shared many antisemitic messages over the years—penned a letter in which he revealed he suffered an undiagnosed brain injury that contributed to his mental health struggles.

Kanye “Ye” West is living with regret.

In a new essay, the rapper shared that many of his most controversial moments in recent years—including printing and selling a T-shirt with a swastika on it—were due to an undiagnosed brain injury acquired during the 2002 car accident that broke his jaw.

“At the time, the focus was on the visible damage—the fracture, the swelling, and the immediate physical trauma,” he wrote in the letter published as an ad in the Wall Street Journal Jan. 26. “The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.”

West added that due to not receiving comprehensive scans and the limitations of neurological exams at the time, his frontal-lobe injury wasn’t diagnosed until 2023. “That medical oversight caused serious damage to my mental health,” he wrote, “and led to my bipolar type-1 diagnosis.”

The 48-year-old went on to detail the side effects of his diagnosis, including the denial that anything is wrong. “The scariest thing about this disorder,” he said, “is how persuasive it is when it tells you: You don’t need help. It makes you blind, but convinced you have insight. You feel powerful, certain, unstoppable.”

West—who shares four kid with ex-wife Kim Kardashian—says that amid his mental health struggles, he “lost touch with reality” and “said and did things” he regrets.

“In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it,” he said. “One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments – many of which I still cannot recall – that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience.”

He continued, “I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment, and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”

The “Runaway” artist went on to share he “fell into a four-month long episode of psychotic, paranoid and impulsive behavior” in early 2025 which he says “destroyed” his life. After hitting “rock bottom” in recent months, West said his wife Bianca Censori encouraged him to seek help.

Amid these low points, he said, there were occasions he “didn’t want to be here anymore.”

“As I find my new baseline and new center through an effective regime of medication, therapy, exercise, and clean living, I have newfound, much-needed clarity,” he said. “I am pouring my energy into positive, meaningful art: music, clothing, design, and other new ideas to help the world.”

And before signing off his letter “with love,” West concluded, “I’m not asking for sympathy, or a free pass, though I aspire to earn your forgiveness. I write today simply to ask for your patience and understanding as I find my way home.”

This is not the first time West has addressed the swastika T-shirts, which were the only product on the Yeezy website at the time of an ad that aired during the 2025 Super Bowl in at least one marked which saw West encourage fans to go to the website.

One day before the commercial aired, however, he denied claims he’d made the product, writing on X Feb. 8, “I WOULD NEVER SELL A SWASTIKA TEE SHIRT BECAUSE PEOPLE COULD PHYSICALLY HARMED WHILE WEARING IT I LOVE MY FANS AND SUPPORTERS.”

While West continues on his path of healing and forgiveness, he isn’t the only celebrity to have gotten candid about their mental health. Read on for more.

Gucci Mane

The rapper (real name Radric Davis) revealed in his October 2025 book Episodes: The Diary of a Recovering Mad Man that he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, which prompted a mental health episode in 2020.

“After that, I was like, ‘Man, I got to really just hold myself accountable and take care of my health,’” he said on an episode of The Breakfast Club. “I don’t never want to have an episode again. I’m gonna see a therapist, [even] if I have to take medicine.”

In addition to his hope that his vulnerability would help others in need, Gucci Mane said that his kids Ice Davis and Iceland Ka’oir Davis with wife Keyshia Ka’Oir inspired him to seek help amid his episode.

“My wife was pregnant with my little boy,” he continued. “I don’t want to raise a family and then my mental health [is] gone. What if I have an episode I can’t come back from? So, I just started doing the work and started seeking help.”

Penn Badgley

The Gossip Girl alum detailed his experience as a child actor with what he described as “body dysmorphia.”

“I know that I hated my body,” Penn told The Guardian in April 2025, “and simply wanted a different one.”

In response to the weight he gained following his parents’ divorce, he added, “There was just a period where, coming out of depression and isolation, I was jumping wilfully into, but also being thrust into, this world where the more conventionally beautiful I seemed, the more successful I might be, the more value I might have.”

Despite the mental struggles, though, Penn credited his ability to persist to his spirituality.

“That is what allowed me to persevere through the disillusionment, all the things I’d been grappling with,” he explained, “and then come back to it all, but with hopefully some kind of inner transformation.”

Eliza Coupe

The Scrubs alum has been vocal about her past difficult relationship with food.

“Some may call it an eating disorder, I just call it my life,” she said on the The Funny Thing Is podcast. “My drug of choice was always food. I did crazy s–t with it.”

She added, “I would over-exercise, and there was a sprinkle of bulimia in there.”

Though she has confessed her struggles with her diet, she has also shared her progress with her health and fitness goals.

“When I was 23, I cut all sugar out of my diet, quit drinking, and found yoga and breathing and stretching,” she told Bon Appétit in 2017. “That’s the best Ritalin you could give anyone.”

She continued, “I’m an actress with food issues and body image issues—that’s real. But I’m trying to heal that part of myself and also handle my physical issues naturally by putting the best things into my body.”

Candace Cameron Bure

The Full House alum reflected on her mental health journey and navigating her battle with depression.

“It’s very difficult to speak out about it, even to your most trusted people,” she shared on her Candace Cameron Bure Podcast. “At least for me, I feel like I should be strong enough to overcome that and then it feels so weak.”

Billie Eilish

The Grammy winner has been very open about how she protects her energy, such as ignoring haters on social media, while also sharing her advice for those who may need help.

“When people ask me what I’d say to somebody looking for advice on mental health, the only thing I can say is patience,” she told Vogue. “I had patience with myself. I didn’t take that last step. I waited. Things fade.”

Katy Perry

While everyone was trying to make the best of socially distancing to slow the coronavirus pandemic, the “Firework” artist got real about how situations like this can also be extremely stressful.

“Sometimes I don’t know what’s worse trying to avoid the virus or the waves of depression that come with this new norm,” she shared on Twitter. Katy talked about how she manages those waves, writing, “There is not really anywhere to go besides my car. So I go to my car a lot. That is my safe space.”

Kendall Jenner

The model, who teamed up with designer Kenneth Cole to raise awareness for The Mental Health Coalition, spoke on Good Morning America about her own experiences with anxiety.

She recalled after her panic attacks started recurring, she, “finally kind of got the information that I needed about it.”

“For me, I have good days and I have some really anxious days, so I’m really off and on,” Kendall expressed, adding that was why she wanted to become involved with the movement. “What I hope to accomplish is for people to not feel as alone.”

Dwayne Johnson

The Black Adam actor has been open about having depression and how it can be difficult for men to talk about their mental health.

“We all go thru the sludge/shit and depression never discriminates. Took me a long time to realize it but the key is to not be afraid to open up,” he wrote on Twitter. “Especially us dudes have a tendency to keep it in. You’re not alone.”

Prince Harry

The Duke of Sussex helped break down some of the stigma around seeking help for mental health when, in an interview with the Telegraph, he opened up about his own journey with therapy. As he told the outlet, “The experience I have had is that once you start talking about it, you realize that actually you’re part of quite a big club.”

Taraji P. Henson

Another proponent of seeking professional help, the Empire star has been open about her struggles with depression.

“I have a therapist that I speak to,” she previously told Variety. “That’s the only way I can get through it.”

Taraji even started The Boris Lawrence Henson Foundation, which works to reduce the stigma around mental health in the African American community and also works to increase the number of Black therapists.

Lorde

The Grammy winner explained that experiences with an eating disorder and stage freight led her to start a form of PTSD treatment called MDMA and and psilocybin therapy.

“I was touring without stage fright for the first time,” she told Rolling Stone in May 2025. “There was a hook around my guts and everyone in the room was having the same feeling, [like] there’d been a huge pressure change. It made me realize how much I love and kind of need that very deep, visceral response to feel my music.”

She added that her renewed focus on her mental health, as well as her decision to stop taking birth control, caused her understanding of her own gender to become “more expansive.”

“I felt like stopping taking my birth control, I had cut some sort of cord between myself and this regulated femininity,” she continued. “It sounds crazy, but I felt that all of a sudden, I was off the map of femininity. And I totally believed that that allowed things to open up.”

Lili Reinhart

“When I was in middle school, I was struggling with severe anxiety and depression and the help and support I received from my family and a therapist saved my life,” the Riverdale actress wrote on Instagram in 2017. “Asking for help is the first step. You are more precious to this world than you’ll ever know.”

Carly Pearce

The “What He Didn’t Do” singer shared insight into what her life has been like during her yearslong battle with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).

“I would have told you three years ago my anxiety started during my divorce in Covid,” Carly said an August 2025 episode of Bunnie Xo’s Dumb Blonde podcast. “But I’ve had crippling OCD since I was a child.”

“I got really conditioned over the last 10 years to just zip it up and deal with it, and it just kind of got to a place where a couple years ago I just had to really start back into therapy, start really, like, trying to figure out all of these different things,” she continued. “Like, recognizing OCD was something—no, that didn’t come in 2020, that’s been there since I was 6 or 7.”

Kristen Bell

The Frozen star has talked for years about her strategies for coping with her mental health at public keynotes and even on her Instagram Stories.

She has advocated for finding the methods that help you best, which for her, according to Health, can include medication, listing ten positive things in her life for every negative thought and getting plenty of exercise.

Chrissy Teigen

While the cookbook author is the proud parent to four kiddos, she’s also been open about postpartum depression that many new mothers experience but feel like they cannot talk about.

“It got easier and easier to say it aloud every time,” she wrote in an open letter to Glamour in 2017. “I want people to know it can happen to anybody and I don’t want people who have it to feel embarrassed or to feel alone.”

Cara Delevingne

While promoting her book Mirror, Mirror, the model opened up to The Edit magazine about facing depression and suicidal thoughts as a teenager, saying she felt “something dark” in her during that time.

“I relied too much on love, too much on other people to make me happy, and I needed to learn to be happy by myself,” Cara told the publication, via W. “So now I can be by myself, I can be happy. It took me a long time.”

Ariana Grande

The “Thank U, Next” artist has encouraged fans to seek help if they need, responding to a Twitter user who joked about wondering who Ariana’s therapist is with, “lmaoaoo this is funny as f–k but in all honesty therapy has saved my life so many times.”

“If you’re afraid to ask for help, don’t be,” she continued. “u don’t have to be in constant pain & u can process trauma. I’ve got a lot of work to do but it’s a start to even be aware that it’s possible.”

Demi Lovato

The singer has been open about her journey with addiction, sobriety, mental health and more, including many of those aspects of her life within her music.

She also continually reminds fans that working on your mental health is an ongoing process where there will be some bad days, previously writing on Instagram, “A reminder to anyone struggling out there – this life is a journey with tons of ups and downs but you can’t give up.”

Zendaya

Not only has the actress taken on roles that deal with mental health, such as her role as Rue in the teen drama Euphoria, she’s also addressed those issues in her own life, too.

Back in 2013, Zendaya wrote on her now-defunct app that she struggled with anxiety after an appearance on Ellen where her mic went out. She has since learned ways to manage those feelings, adding, “Sometimes you just have to take a step back so things stop stressin’ you.”

Selena Gomez

The singer candidly described her mental health journey with WSJ Magazine, saying, “My highs were really high, and my lows would take me out for weeks at a time.”

“I found out I do suffer from mental health issues,” she shared. “I got on the right medication, and my life has been completely changed.”

Lady Gaga

The Grammy winner made it her mission to spread kindness and be open about mental health, including her own.

“I have struggled for a long time, both being public and not public about my mental health issues or my mental illness,” she said during the Global Changemakers Award at Children Mending Hearts’ Empathy Rocks fundraiser in 2018. “But, I truly believe that secrets keep you sick.”