Hollywood actress Taraji P Henson has revealed that she had suicidal thoughts amid the Covid pandemic. The actress revealed she even thought of how her death would affect her son, Marcell Johnson.
Henson made the revelation on her Facebook Watch series, "Peace Of Mind With Taraji", as per media reports.
"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 said during a conversation with co-host Tracie Jade and psychologist Dr. LaShonda Green.
"Then I started having thoughts about ending it," Henson said. She shared that she had recently purchased a gun and thought: "'I could go in there right now, and just end it all."
On how her son would react to her death, Henson remembered thinking: "'He's grown, he'll get over it'."
After a couple of nights of such thoughts, she knew she had to tell someone.
"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 and added that "part of" her felt "ashamed".
"I was like, I don't want them to think I'm crazy. 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.
"'Oh my god, I feel so much better. I'm not gonna do it now'," she added.
Henson said that opening up about her thoughts helped her overcome the negativity.
"For me, I'm no professional, but I felt like, if I don't say it, it becomes a plan," Henson said.
"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," she added.