See John Green’s Refreshingly Real Answer About Dealing With Mental Illness

In a word: Poorly.
(I have OCD and a lot of problems with anxiety.) So I’ve known that I have this mental illness for a long time, and I’ve had a lot of therapy and learned a lot of strategies for dealing with my illness. I know the benefits of exercise and meditation and medication and CBT strategies and etc.
And I try to treat my mental illness the way you would any chronic illness, and I’m very lucky that in general it’s very manageable. But it’s hard to describe just how extreme and overwhelming press junkets are. (I mean, I realize these are the first-worldiest problems possible; I’m just trying to be honest about my experience.)
But I was very lucky to have Nat Wolff with me almost all the time. Nat is a very close friend of mine, and I also trust him a lot. Whenever I got overwhelmed, he would take most of that interview, or he would find ways to distract me. (“Try to get the word ‘Arkansas’ into this interview,” for instance.)
But there were a few moments when panic just really took hold of me. Nat and I always joke about this one time in Brazil when I literally lost consciousness for a few seconds (or at least awareness) and asked for a question to be repeated and then said in a small voice, “I’m sorry but I’m having a panic attack,” and then Nat answered the question for me. There were a few moments like that, but mostly I was able to get through it.