Yuval Scharf on depression: "I had no meaning, no existence"
Actress and entrepreneur Yuval Scharf was a guest on Itay Segal's podcast and spoke about her struggle with depression during her first pregnancy. She discussed the frustration of not working as an actress and the moment she decided to stop waiting for opportunities from others: "I said to myself: I've had enough, take responsibility."
Behind the spotlight and a successful career, actress and entrepreneur Yuval Scharf returned to one of the most complex chapters of her life. In an interview on Itay Segal's podcast from the all in podcast network, Scharf revealed her struggle with depression during her first pregnancy — a topic that is almost never discussed in the public sphere — and told how her new path in the world of entrepreneurship grew precisely out of that deep mental crisis.
"In one word, I was diagnosed with depression during pregnancy," she shared, seeking to distinguish between the phenomenon she experienced, which many tend to ignore, and postpartum depression, a more well-known phenomenon. "It is really important to be precise about this — it is depression during pregnancy, not after childbirth. One in 15 women can experience this. Most of the time they will tell you 'well, okay, you are pregnant so you are a little sad', but it can get worse and it can develop, the physiological and hormonal changes, literally into this thing."
Alongside the turmoil, Scharf admitted that that period was also accompanied by severe professional frustration and a lack of work in the field of acting. "I think it's also related to the fact that I basically didn't find myself in the world, I had no meaning, no existence, other than being a mom, a wife," she said.
"I said to myself: take responsibility, give yourself opportunities"
The feeling of stagnation and complete dependence on the decisions of external factors in the industry brought the actress to a realization that she says changed her worldview. "Suddenly I had this kind of understanding of... I'm fed up," she said, "I don't want my happiness to be based only on whether I got a role or not, if they saw me, if they didn't see me, if they gave me an opportunity... like take responsibility, give yourself opportunities for other things and develop in other areas as well."
Scharf continued and added: "I cannot be based only on someone deciding that they want to give me this series, because many times it's not related... most of the time it's not related to talent at all, it's just related to a collection of a great many meetings of things."
From that low point, Scharf said she decided to take the reins back into her own hands: "From that place I said: okay, I have an opportunity here. I talked about it at an event and it became very viral, and suddenly a lot of people reached out to me. And then I realized that it didn't just happen to me, and that I have an opportunity to take my story and thanks to who I am and thanks to what I went through — to leverage it to help other people, and also to help myself gain more meaning and more activity and more economic development."
