The TV personality got candid about her past struggles in honor of National Suicide Prevention Week.
Ginger Zee is opening up about her past suicide attempts and sharing a powerful message with her followers amid National Suicide Prevention Week. The ABC meteorologist took to social media to share a throwback photo of herself on Friday, revealing a low moment in her life after her second suicide attempt.
"This photo always breaks my heart. This was during my first real job on tv at WEYI. This wide, forced smile was not long after my second suicide attempt. Of course no one at work knew," she begins. "I was a master at hiding my mental health issues. Especially from myself."
"It is #suicidepreventionweek and I often wonder if there is anything I could go back and say to myself the morning I tried to take my own life," she continues on Instagram. "I don’t know if I would have been ready to hear it."
Zee writes that she does not know if her message will help anyone, "but I feel it is my duty to talk about it -- because I was lucky."
"Beyond the luck, I had the support and financial ability to get the help I needed to treat my mental health issues. Not everyone has that," she acknowledges before adding that if anyone is having suicidal thoughts to "take it seriously."
"Act immediately. Don’t be afraid to go to the hospital to get urgent help and they can get you to the right type of therapy or medication you may need," she concludes before sharing that Child Mind Institute has great resources for parents and kids.
Zee has been vocal about her past struggles. In 2011, she checked herself into a mental hospital to seek treatment for depression.
Back in 2017, the TV personality sat down with Good Morning America's Robin Roberts to talk about her new memoir, Natural Disaster: I Cover Them, I Am One, which went into detail about her mental health issues.
"I fought a disease called depression that a lot of people fight every, single day," Zee explained. "And just like any disease there is a stigma or, unlike other diseases, there is a stigma surrounding it. And I want to help the hundreds of thousands or millions that are dealing with or dealt with something I did. And I want them to be able to fight without shame."
Roberts praised Zee for not holding back and even admitting that she thought about taking her own life.
"I start the book by saying, 'Ten days before I started my job at ABC News I checked myself into a mental health hospital,'" Zee shared. "And that took a lot of guts to start there and bury the lede. There's some joy in there. There is a lot of comedy. There's a lot of other things, but you need to get to the crux of it and that is, I had a disease. I will always have that disease. It's not something that just magically goes away. But, boy, I sought help and I actually committed to getting help like anybody with cancer or any other disease, they go to the hospital and that's OK."
For more on Zee's struggles, see below.
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