Michelle Obama has said she is suffering from "low-grade depression" due to the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice and the "hypocrisy" of Donald Trump’s administration.
The former US First Lady, speaking on her new podcast, said managing "emotional highs and lows" required "knowing yourself" and "the things that do bring you joy".
Mrs Obama said she has had difficulties with her exercise routine, that her sleep had been “off” and she had been feeling "out of body, out of mind”.
She said: ”I know that I am dealing with some form of low-grade depression.”
"Not just because of the quarantine, but because of the racial strife, and just seeing this administration, watching the hypocrisy of it, day in and day out, is dispiriting."
She made the comments during the second episode of her eponymous podcast, on which she was interviewing US journalist Michele Norris.
Mrs Obama also said it was "exhausting" to be "waking up to yet another story of a black man or a black person somehow being dehumanised, or hurt, or killed, or falsely accused of something."
She added: ”It has led to a weight that I haven't felt in my life, in a while.”
For the first episode of the podcast she interviewed her husband Barack Obama, who was in office before the current US leader, Mr Trump.
