Willow Smith self-harmed after 'losing her sanity'

[Skylights]

Singer/actress Willow Smith has shocked her mother Jada Pinkett Smith by confessing to self-harming during the height of her struggles with fame.

The 17-year-old has previously opened up about the difficulties she experienced emotionally after the huge success of her Whip My Hair hit in 2010, but in a new chat, Willow reveals she was so depressed, she lost her "sanity" and ended up cutting her wrists.

The young star went public with her personal trauma during a recent episode of Red Table Talk, the new Facebook Watch show she hosts with actress Jada and her grandmother Adrienne Banfield-Jones, and the family matriarchs were stunned by the revelation.

"It was after that whole Whip My Hair thing and I had just stopped doing singing lessons and I was kind of just in this grey area of, 'Who am I? Do I have a purpose? Is there anything I can do besides this?'" Willow recalled, going back seven years to when she was 10, as the three women discussed what they considered to be their "greatest loss".

"After the tour and the promotion and all of that, they (label bosses) wanted me to finish my album," she continued. "And I was like, 'I'm not gonna do that'. And after all of that kinda settled down and it was like a kind of lull, I was just listening to a lot of dark music. It was just so crazy and I was plunged into this black hole, and I was cutting myself."

Clearly shocked by the revelation, Jada asked, "What? When were you cutting yourself? I didn't see that part. Cutting yourself where?"

"On my wrist," Willow replied, as she showed off the fading marks. "I mean, you can't even see it but there's still a little something there... (I) totally lost my sanity for a moment there. I never talk about it because it was such a short weird point in my life. But you have to pull yourself out of it."

The teen, whose father is Will Smith, only shared the extent of her troubles with a close friend, and now admits she quickly put a stop to her method of pain relief when she realised it was "actually psychotic".

Still shocked by her daughter's heartbreaking secret, Jada said, "Willow, I had no idea. I never saw any signs of that."