Simon Cowell Shares His Lifelong Struggle With Depression

Being depressed prevents you from simply “snapping out of it.” Simon Cowell believed he could “deal” with his sadness on his own.

The 63-year-old music tycoon acknowledged having mental health problems over the years, but at first thought it was just part of his personality. However, as the Covid-19 pandemic began, he wished he had sought help years earlier.

He remarked on the “Men in Mind” podcast from “The Mirror” that “Covid was the true spark. I had experienced depression over the years, but I simply accepted that as a feature of my personality. I’m down,’ and you have to cope with it. It feels like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders, and I wish I had done this ten or twenty years ago. International reality star; Simon Cowell believed he could “deal” with his sadness on his own.

The ‘American Idol’ judge went on to say that early in the pandemic, some of his friends became “really ill” with the virus and he became “petrified” that he was going to catch it himself out of concern for what would happen to his family. The judge has a nine-year-old son named Eric with his fiancee Lauren Silverman.

He said: “In the very, very, very early stages, some friends of mine got really ill [with Covid] and I’m talking about really ill. So, I thought, ‘God, if I catch this, maybe the same thing’s going to happen to me, Eric and Lauren. I didn’t know what was true or not, I just didn’t have a clue other than I was petrified about catching it. Just petrified.”

However, the ‘X Factor’ creator admitted that lockdown had given him “time to reflect” in a way he had never been able to before.

He said: “It gave me time to reflect on things in a way I never would have done before. And as things started to calm down a bit, it was almost like now I’ve got to go from there, back into the real world. How do I feel about that? And that’s when this whole notion of — I started to hear a lot more people talking about mental health.

“And that’s when I thought, you know what, I’ve kind of looked after my body, you know, through diet, exercise, whatever, pretty well over the years, but what have I done about my brain and my mind and all that kind of thing? And the answer is nothing. And now’s the time to do it. So it was almost like my head going to the gym.”