SNL star Bowen Yang shares health update after 'rough patch'
Bowen Yang went through a "rough patch" with his mental health but is now "doing great."
The 33-year-old comedian - who is best known for starring on 'Saturday Night Live' - revealed recently that he had to take a break from fronting his 'Las Culturistas' podcast and take some time out for himself but having done that has now admitted that he has "powered through" thanks to the patience of others.
He told PageSix: "My mental health is great. I had a really rough patch and people were very patient with me. It’s hard but you know, I barreled through. I powered through."
The 'Bros' actor previously revealed that he was struggling with "bad bouts of depersonalization"but reassured his fans at the time that he was "doing [his] best" to get better.
He wrote on his Instagram Story: "Taking a very short break from last clutch. Bad bouts of depersonalization are f****** me up bad but I am doing my best to get better! Please take care, be back soon.(sic)"
The scriptwriter previously described himself as "pretty damaged" and recalled an incident when he was 17 and his parents found an online conversation he'd been having using an instant messaging service.
He told the New York Times newspaper in 2020: "Me sort of having lewd conversations with someone, just revealing that this was who I was, that I was gay.
"They just sat me down and yelled at me and said, 'We don’t understand this. Where we come from, this doesn’t happen.' I'd only seen my father cry when my grandpa died and now he’s sobbing in front of me every day at dinner. And I’m thinking, 'How do I make this right?' This is the worst thing you can do as a child of immigrants. It’s just like you don’t want your parents to suffer this much over you."
Bowen's father later arranged for eight sessions of treatment for the comedy writer, which turned out to be conversion therapy.
He said: "I allowed myself the thought experiment of, 'What if this could work?'
"Even though as I read up on it, I was just like, 'Oh, wait, this is all completely crackers.' At the first session, he asks me, 'Would you like this to be Christ centered or a secular sort of experience?'
"And I was like, 'I guess nonreligious.' But even for him to ask that question means that there was this kind of religious agenda behind it anyway.
"The first few sessions were talk therapy, which I liked, and then it veers off into this place of, 'Let's go through a sensory description of how you were feeling when you’ve been attracted to men.'