Simon Cowell Talks Mental Health Journey and Therapy

Simon Cowell wishes he didn’t wait so late in life to try mental health therapy for the first time.

“COVID was the real catalyst,” the America’s Got Talent creator, 63, said in the first episode of The Mirror‘s Men in Mind podcast, produced in collaboration with the mental health Mind.

“I’ve suffered from depression over the years… but that was just something I just thought, ‘Well, that’s my character trait. I get down,’ and it’s something you deal with,” Cowell later said.

Cowell explained, “I wish I had done this 10 or 20 years ago…it’s like a weight has lifted off my shoulders.” He credits the “super positive effect” of therapy on his life. Therapy inspired him to ban his staff from sharing TV ratings for his biggest TV shows, something he noted he has been far too focused on in the past.

The music mogul described a feeling of being in a constant state of anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“In the very, very, very early stages, some friends of mine got really ill [with COVID] and I’m talking about really ill,” he recalled.

”So, I thought, ‘God, if I catch this, maybe the same thing’s going to happen to me, Eric and Lauren,’ ” he said, referring to his 9-year-old son Eric and fiancée Lauren Silverman.

The constant stream of news only made things worse, with Cowell adding, “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.”

While Cowell eventually caught COVID during this “nightmare” period, it turned out to be a relatively mild case. However, as the world began to re-open, he started seeking out ways to improve his mental health.

“It gave me a time to reflect on things in a way I never would have done before,” Cowell told The Mirror. “And as things started to calm down a bit, and 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.”

Following advice from friends who claimed they benefited from therapy, Cowell, who describes himself as “curious by nature,” said he started to read up about the subject of 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,” he explained.

Cowell recalled that when growing up in the U.K. watching American dramas, he noticed how characters would often talk about going to therapy. At the time he felt it was “dramatic” and “over the top,” and admitted that as a British person, he couldn’t relate.

“I never took [the notion of therapy] seriously if I’m being honest,” Cowell said. “It was only like I said, having gone through something pretty traumatic [in COVID], that I realized, and like I said, having good friends who were very open about it.”

As discussions surrounding mental health became part of day-to-day conversations, the concept of self-reflection started to make sense to Cowell, although at first, he didn’t know where to begin in his search for a therapist, asking friends, “Well, where do I start?”

“And they just said, ‘Well, you’ve got to find someone you clicked with.’ And what if you don’t? ‘Well, then you go to somebody else,’ ” Cowell said of the conversations he had with his social circle.

Cowell noted how embarrassed he felt during that first session with a therapist.

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“I sat down really embarrassed and I said, ‘Look I just don’t know where to start,’ ” Cowell said of his first therapy session. “And within about 20 minutes it was as if I’d known [the therapist] for 10, 20 years, he’d put me so much at ease, and you realize you’re talking to a professional, and they don’t judge you, they listen to you.”

After regular sessions, Cowell processed the mental health issues he felt had been holding him back, including his focus on the TV ratings for his shows.

“He asked me, ‘Do you consider your best work to be the highest-rated thing you’ve ever done?’ ” Cowell told The Mirror of one particular therapy session. “And I said, ‘No.’ And he said, ‘So why are you judging yourself on that?’ ”

“It was just like this massive load lifting off my shoulders,” he admitted. “Now I am happy to talk about it to encourage others too.”