Hollywood actress Taraji P Henson during an episode of her Facebook Watch series, Peace of Mind with Taraji has revealed she thought of suicide during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown.
The “Hidden Figures” star said:
“For a couple of days, I couldn’t get out of the bed, I didn’t care. That’s not me,” the 50-year-old Oscar nominee said in a conversation with co-host Tracie Jade and licensed psychologist Dr. LaShonda Green.
“Then, I started having thoughts about ending it,” Henson continued, explaining that she had recently purchased a gun and thought, “‘I could go in there right now, and just end it all.'”
According to her, she considered how her death would affect her son, Marcell Johnson, and remembered thinking, “‘He’s grown, he’ll get over it.'”
She decided to let someone else into her dark thoughts after two nights of suicidal thoughts.
“I felt myself withdrawing. People were calling me, I wasn’t responding. I just didn’t care. Finally, I’m talking to one of my girlfriends and I knew, I was smart enough to say, ‘I have to say it,'” Henson said, adding that “part of” her felt “ashamed.”
“I was like, I don’t want them to think I’m crazy,” she said. “I don’t want them to, you know, obsess over me or think they gotta come and sit on me.”
“So one day I just blurted it out, to my girlfriend. She called me in the morning and I was like, ‘You know I thought about killing myself last night,'” Henson said, taking a big breath and then adding, “‘Oh my god, I feel so much better. I’m not gonna do it now.'”
She went on:
“For me, I’m no professional, but I felt like, if I don’t say it, it becomes a plan. And what scared me, is that I did it two nights in a row. And the thoughts kept coming. Now I started think about how. At first, it was like, I don’t want to be here. And then I started thinking about going and getting the gun. And that’s why when I woke up the next morning, and I blurted it out. Because I felt like after a while it was going to take over me and it was going to become a plan because that’s how strong my brain is.”
Henson is since on a better part as she said that turning 50 in September helped her regain a positive look at life. She told Entertainment Tonight ahead of hosting the American Music Awards in November.
“I felt myself slipping and so I was like, ‘You know what I am not going to do is let 50 happen to me,” she said. “I am going to get control of this mentally and not be like, ‘You are getting old, don’t nobody care, you ain’t working,’ Well, duh, no one is working, it is COVID. So I felt that coming.”
