Lady Gaga has spoken up about the long-term effects of being sexually assaulted as a teenager, stating she had a “total psychotic break” years after her alleged rapist left her pregnant.

In an interview for the Apple TV+ documentary “The Me You Can’t See” on mental health and the long-term impact of trauma, Gaga, now 35, detailed the attack.

The actress was 19 years old when she was raped by a male music producer who threatened to burn her songs if she didn’t take off her clothing.

“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she said. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and – I don’t even remember.”

Gaga has stated that she will not name her alleged attacker. “I understand this #Metoo movement, I understand that some others feel really comfortable with this, and I do not, I do not ever want to face that person again.

“This system is so abusive, it’s so dangerous.”

In 2014, Gaga spoke with radio DJ Howard Stern about the incident, stating, “I was a shell of my former self at one point.” “I didn’t tell anyone for I think seven years,” she stated in 2015. “I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It changed who I was completely. It changed my body, it changed thoughts.”

Her breakdown occurred long afterwards, she said, and it was still going on when she collected her Academy Award for A Star Is Born in 2019.

Years later, after returning to the hospital for persistent pain, she was diagnosed with PSTD, according to the “Poker Face” singer. In 2016, she made her diagnosis public.

She described returning to the hospital for pain and numbness several years after the incident before understanding it was related to her rape.

She remembered, “I [couldn’t] feel my own body.  First I felt full-on pain, then I felt numb, and then I was sick for weeks after.”

“I realised that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner, at my parents’ house, because I was vomiting and sick. Because I had been being abused, and I was locked away in a studio for months.”

The “Star is Born” singer and actress said she suffered “a total psychotic break and for a couple of years I was not the same girl.”

“I had a total psychotic break and, for a couple years, I was not the same girl. The way that I feel when I feel pain is how I felt after I was raped,” she said. “I’ve had so many MRIs and scans. They don’t find nothing, but your body remembers.”

“It’s a really very real thing to feel like there’s a black cloud following you wherever you go, telling you that you’re worthless and should die,” Gaga said of experiencing self-harming impulses. “And I used to scream and throw myself against the wall.”

The singer said: “You know why it’s not good to cut? You know why it’s not good to throw yourself against the wall? You know why it’s not good to self-harm? Because it makes you feel worse. You think you’re going to feel better because you’re showing somebody, ‘Hey, look, I’m in pain.’ It doesn’t help. I always tell people ‘Tell somebody, don’t show somebody.'”

Gaga founded the Born This Way Foundation in 2012 to help those who are dealing with mental health challenges.

She stated that the recovery process was slow.

She said. “Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad. And when I say feel bad, I mean want to cut, think about dying, wondering if I’m ever gonna do it.”

She released her first album The Fame in 2008, two years after surviving the assault, and has since become a global hit, with five US No 1 records. She also began acting, most notably in 2018’s A Star Is Born, for which she received an Oscar nomination.