Taraji P. Henson Contemplated Suicide During The Pandemic

Taraji P. Henson has revealed that she contemplated suicide during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Oscar nominee — who has been open in the past about her struggles with depression and anxiety — described the harrowing “dark moment” she experienced in recent months.

“For a couple of days, I couldn’t get out of the bed, I didn’t care. That’s not me. Then, I started having thoughts about ending it,” she said during her Facebook Watch series, “Peace of Mind with Taraji.”

The “Empire” star, 50, said these thoughts occurred “two nights in a row,” and noted that she owns a gun, which she keeps in a safe.

“If I could go in there right now, and just end it all ’cause I want it to be over, ” Henson recalled of her thoughts.

“Thought about my son [Marcell Johnson], I said, ‘He’s grown, he’ll get over it,'” she continued.

Henson said she felt herself withdrawing from loved ones during this period.

“People were calling me, I wasn’t responding. I didn’t care,” Henson said.

Henson said she finally told a friend about her headspace, adding she felt partly “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,” Henson said. “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, who conversed Wednesday with licensed psychologist Dr. LaShonda Green, said she felt if she kept her thoughts inward, it would become a “plan.”

“At first it was like, ‘I don’t want to be here,’ then I started thinking about going to get the gun. That’s why when I woke up the next morning, 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,” she added.

Last December, Henson detailed her struggles with depression and anxiety.

“There would be days when my brain wouldn’t stop racing with the worst scenarios in the world, which would heighten my anxiety,” she told Self magazine at the time. “There was no shame when I started to recognize it. It was like, ‘I have to get some help,’ because I’m the life of the party and when I go dark, I go dark. I don’t want to leave the house.”

Henson revealed in October she had ended her engagement to Kelvin Hayden. She told Entertainment Tonight in November she was doing “much better” following the split.

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