Porn’s toll on mental health is real, but so is the way out, experts say after 2 more adult stars die 

“I thought my porn career had disqualified me from ever fulfilling these roles,” ex-porn star turned pastor Joshua Broome said about being a husband and a father. “Yet God stood ready to do abundantly more than I could have imagined.”

Broome thought fame in the porn industry would fill the void left by his father abandoning him. Instead of satisfaction and fulfillment, Broome left the industry feeling empty and ready to take his own life.

Brittni De La Mora, another former porn star who left the industry and became a Christian, said she also thought becoming famous in porn would fulfill her.

Instead, she says she contemplated suicide every day.

Two porn stars died by suicide last month. One was 31 years old, and the other was 25. Another adult industry performer, 29, was found dead in August, but a cause of death has yet to be determined.

“I’ve had a lot of people that I knew and loved that have lost their life over the years that worked in adult entertainment,” De La Mora said.

Pornhub gets more than 64 million visitors every day, and more than 90 billion porn videos are watched daily, according to Psychology Today. In a 2026 National University of Singapore study, 94% of American men and 87% of American women reported having viewed pornography at some point in their lives, typically beginning as teens. A 2022 study found that 58% of Americans had watched pornography at some point in their lives, with 27% having watched it in the last month. Men were four times as likely as women to have watched it in the last month.

Studies of pornography’s effects on American consumers and porn stars are scarce, but international studies, including the Singapore study, which includes U.S. participants, show a correlation between porn consumption or performing in pornographic content and depression, which is linked to suicide.

Porn consumption: Like a drug

Consumption of sexually explicit content can develop into what experts call problematic pornography use: difficulty controlling one’s viewing that causes distress or interferes with day-to-day functioning, according to Addiction Help.

Porn addiction isn’t recognized as a World Health Organization (WHO) diagnosis, yet the term is commonly used to describe what people perceive as addictive pornography consumption.

According to Brock Lutz, a licensed counselor at Hillsdale College who formerly worked with sex offenders, pornography use and addiction are often grouped with other compulsive behaviors, including drug and alcohol use and other vices.

“We can turn anything into an addiction, sadly,” agreed Maryam Kubasek, another licensed clinical counselor. “It doesn’t have to be a substance.”

Pornography itself isn’t necessarily the problem, Kubasek told Heartlander News. Rather, something deeper may be going on, and people may believe porn will solve it.

“What is this doing for you?” she asks of users. “Because that gives you some deeper information into what’s lacking.

“What are you longing for? What’s really at the heart of this? What’s the need that needs to get met in a better, safer way?”

Similar to alcohol and drug use, porn is often used to eliminate or decrease unwanted emotions, Lutz explained. Just as alcohol or drug abuse doesn’t solve emotional problems, neither does porn.

“Any kind of compulsive behavior is a really ineffective way to deal with anxiety or depression or past trauma because you’re actually not resolving it, so you’re not really getting at the root of it,” Lutz told Heartlander News.

Everybody seems to engage in porn, so what’s the issue?

While some vices may not seem to hurt other people, Lutz explained, pornography falls into a different category because it objectifies and dehumanizes others.

“Certainly the porn industry is going to want people to do this,” Lutz said. “They are going to dehumanize people as much as possible in pornography. You don’t know their background, you don’t know the hurts or joys in their lives.

“It is a sex act, and it is all about the sex act.”

Porn presents sex as a casual, insignificant act, but Christians know God created sex and that it is good, Lutz said.

“God created it, and God created it for procreation,” he explained. “He also created it for enjoyment and for union and for togetherness in marriage.”

There is a broad understanding of the sanctity of sex even outside the Christian faith, as many people agree that nonconsensual acts, such as rape and sexual abuse, are wrong.

“Sexuality is an important and a special thing to someone that is given away at their own volition and shouldn’t be taken from them,” Lutz said, noting that there is also general value in being faithful to someone.

Additionally, problematic pornography use can cause increased anxiety, depression and even suicidal ideation, according to the Singapore study.

Consuming porn distorts users’ perceptions of themselves and their relationships, the study states. Higher levels of problematic pornography use correlated with higher depression levels in both men and women, with women experiencing higher levels of suicidal ideation.

“Of course, then there’s going to be an increase in those mental health markers because they’re not engaging in activities that are actually good for the soul,” Lutz said.

As with drugs and alcohol, porn consumers can build up a tolerance and need more and more content to achieve the same effect.

The antisocial aspect of pornography leads to increased loneliness, both Lutz and Kubasek explained, which can make people more vulnerable to depression.

“Anytime anyone is struggling with some kind of unwanted compulsive behavior, it’s certainly going to then increase their level of depression, their level of, I think, hopelessness,” Lutz explained.

‘What we do with our bodies matters’

As for performers in the adult industry, a 2022 study by University of Cambridge affiliate Hannes Jarke found that female performers had significantly worse mental health and higher rates of depression than other women of similar ages. The study found that male performers had similar, if not better, mental health than other men.

Two of the three porn stars who died recently were men. Another male performer, 29, died in March. All three men were homosexuals.

“Just speaking from a general human being standpoint, what we do with our bodies absolutely matters, and if you devalue your body in some ways or allow someone to use your body in some way, it will affect you socially and emotionally,” Lutz explained. “It will affect the way you think about the world and certainly affect you spiritually.”

Many blame cyberbullying, abuse and the stigma surrounding sex work for performers’ mental health issues. However, former porn stars Broome and De La Mora describe deep emptiness and shame as the real reasons for the suicidal thoughts they experienced while working in porn.

“When I got into the adult industry, I was already such a broken person, but the industry just amplified that,” De La Mora explained.

She said her mental health was “horrendous” as she battled depression and anxiety and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder during her career. She said she was healed of these conditions when she began following Jesus.

“If anything, my career success only amplified my anxiety and deepened my depression,” Broome said.

AI in porn: Taking dehumanization a step further

New technology, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality pornography, has taken the already dehumanizing aspects of pornography a step further, removing humanity and human relationships from sexual experiences.

The number of AI-generated deepfake porn videos, which depict real people doing things they did not do, often without their consent, rose from 500,000 in 2023 to more than 8 million in 2025.

“With something like AI and especially AI combined with virtual reality pornography … you could actually say that you are utterly destroying anyone’s chances of actually learning how to interact with people in a more healthy way,” Lutz said.

“You’re really undermining and taking away from people the very constructs of what it means to be a human away from them.”

AI and virtual reality porn likely contribute to declining marriage and birth rates nationwide, Lutz explained, as people may be less motivated to go out to church or a bar to meet others. Instead, he said, they can sit alone in their basements with their electronic devices.

Lutz previously spoke about pornography at a conference and said he found an article in which a CEO of a virtual reality sex company said, “We’re going to put normal sex out of business.”

AI-generated child pornography has also increased exponentially, according to a report by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF), which is based in the United Kingdom. The organization evaluated 8,029 realistic AI-generated child pornography images and videos in 2025 and identified 3,443 AI-generated child pornography videos, compared with just 13 videos recorded the previous year.

Of the 3,443 videos identified, 65% were ranked as “category A,” the most extreme classification, which includes acts such as rape, torture and bestiality. In the same year, 43% of criminal videos not produced by AI received a category A ranking.

‘You’re worth it’: Finding freedom from porn and mental health struggles

People who want to stop watching porn can take the first step by bringing the issue into the light and asking for help, Lutz said.

“You’re worth more than that and you’re worth more than how you’ve been treated, and there is a God who can love you and show you that you have value and show you that your life can have meaning,” he said, addressing both porn consumers and performers.

God doesn’t continuously condemn people for their sins, Lutz added. Rather, he walks with them and heals them, carrying their pain, anxiety and depression. People just have to turn to him.

Kubasek and Lutz both agreed that Christians can struggle with porn addiction and mental health issues just like anyone else.

“Just like physical ailments happen to Christians, sometimes there are emotional and mental ailments that happen, and God wants to walk with us through those things,” Lutz added.

How the church can do better

The church could do a better job of supporting people struggling with addiction or depression, Kubasek said, because many feel it is not a safe space to be honest about their struggles.

Not talking about sex at all can be harmful, Lutz echoed. He and his wife provide premarital counseling for couples, which includes conversations about sex. For many of the couples they mentor, this is the first real conversation about sex they have ever had, even compared with conversations with their parents.

Parents even call the dreaded sex conversation “the talk,” Lutz pointed out, conveniently avoiding the actual word.

“I think just the fact that God in writing Scripture uses marriage metaphors, sex metaphors in talking about relationship and intimacy and union with God, I think it just shows how fundamental that is to the human soul,” Lutz said, adding that understanding the reason and design for sex in marriage is important.

Whether people are struggling with addiction, mental health issues or other challenges, Jesus offers redemption and wants to walk with them through it, Lutz said.

“It’s so precious, and anyone can have that.”

(Photo credit: Unsplash, Mia Anderson)