At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when lockdowns were in full-swing, actress Taraji P. Henson contemplated taking her life.
Speaking on her “Peace of Mind with Taraji” Facebook Watch series, the “Empire” actress said that some days she could not get out of bed.
“For a couple of days, I couldn’t get out of the bed, I didn’t care, that’s not me,” she told co-host Tracie Jade and psychologist Dr. LaShonda Green.
Henson then began “having thoughts about ending it,” prompting her to think about grabbing the gun she had recently bought.
“I could go in there right now, and just end it all,” she recalled of her thoughts at the time.
For two nights, Henson contemplated suicide and withdrew from the world entirely until she finally told a girlfriend about the painful thoughts she was experiencing.
“People were calling me, I wasn’t responding. I didn’t care,” she 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].’ Oh my God, I feel so much better. I’m not gonna do it now,” she later added.
As The Daily Wire recently reported, a study out of the U.K. shows that depression, especially among children, has dramatically increased during the COVID-19 lockdowns.
“Rates of depression have skyrocketed among children under COVID-19 lockdown, according to a new study from the University of Cambridge,” said the report. “The study, which tracked 168 children between the ages of 7-1/2 and 11-1/2 before and after the U.K. government imposed the first lockdown, concluded there was ‘a significant increase in depression symptoms’ among the participants.”
According to the study, the depression seen among children directly correlates with the lockdown measures, which have forced school closures, social incapacitation, and economic hardship.
“During the UK lockdown, children’s depression symptoms have increased substantially, relative to before lockdown,” the study read. “The scale of this effect has direct relevance for the continuation of different elements of lockdown policy, such as complete or partial school closures.”
“Specifically, we observed a statistically significant increase in ratings of depression, with a medium-to-large effect size,” it continued. “Our findings emphasise the need to incorporate the potential impact of lock-down on child mental health in planning the ongoing response to the global pandemic and the recovery from it.”
In August, a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that more than 25% of young people aged 18-24 had “seriously considered suicide in the 30 days before completing the survey.”
“The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has been associated with mental health challenges related to the morbidity and mortality caused by the disease and to mitigation activities, including the impact of physical distancing and stay-at-home orders,” the report began. “Symptoms of anxiety disorder and depressive disorder increased considerably in the United States during April–June of 2020, compared with the same period in 2019.”
Related: Depression Among Children Has Increased ‘Substantially’ Under Lockdown: Study