Naomi Judd’s Most Honest Quotes About Her Mental Health Struggle Before 2022 Death: Depression ‘Stole Time From Me’

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Naomi Judd’s Most Honest Quotes About Her Mental Health Struggle Before 2022 Death: Depression ‘Stole Time From Me’

An open book. Naomi Judd was vocal about her battle with mental illness and depression before her April 2022 death at the age of 76. “[Fans] see me in rhinestones, you know, with glitter in my hair, that really is who I am,” the musician told Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts in December 2016. “But then I would come home and not leave the house for three weeks, and not get out of my pajamas, and not practice normal hygiene. It was really bad.” The former Judds member — who detailed her depression issues in her 2016 River of Time memoir — told The Palm Beach Post that during her lowest times, she grappled with the idea of taking her own life. “I know what it’s like to go down to the bridge and be ready to jump off,” she told the outlet in 2016, noting that she was fighting to come out on top. “It’s going through it that’s exquisitely harrowing. You have to have somebody to watch you, somebody to make sure you are on the right meds. My husband [Larry Strickland] hasn’t let me out of his sight in two-and-a-half years.” Naomi sang alongside her eldest daughter, Wynonna Judd, for nearly a decade before stepping back from music in 1991 to deal with her Hepatitis C diagnosis. The duo later reunited for multiple shows and another record, but in 2010, Naomi began battling severe depression. “I’m trying to start a national conversation about depression and anxiety,” she told Today’s Savannah Guthrie while promoting her book in December 2017. “There are 43 million of us out there. I want to let the world know that it’s not a character flaw. It’s a disease.” [jwplayer 95XyhnLK-zhNYySv2] The “Girls Night Out” musician added: “We don’t make enough of the good neurochemicals in the brain. It’s a disease. It has nothing to do with our character.” Naomi noted that her public persona could no longer mask what was going on inside her head, which is when she began seeking treatment. “I used [to] say to myself, looking in the mirror, ‘I'm Naomi freaking Judd. I got this.’ I even wrote it out and taped it there,” she wrote in a December 2017 essay for NBC News. “But when the problem is your brain, when the problem involves the way that you're thinking and the way you're living every day of your life, you can't pull that off anymore.” Her family, which also includes daughter Ashley Judd, eventually stepped in to get her help. “Ashley is so grounded, so she was more administrative. She was on the phone booking flights, telling me, ‘OK, Mom. This is what we're going to do now.’ Wy is more emotional: She would come over and get in bed with me, and just hug me, and hold on to me,” Naomi recalled. “And Larry is so constant; he was always there for me. If I was somewhere in treatment, he would get the closest motel, and be there with me every visiting hour.” The “Love Can Build a Bridge” singer appeared to be in better spirits in early 2022 when she and Wynonna, 57, performed at the CMT Music Awards that April, marking their last duet together. However, later that month her daughters confirmed her death on April 30. Scroll down to see Naomi’s most poignant quotes about mental health through the years: [podcast_block]

Credit: Hallmark/Kobal/Shutterstock

Naomi Judd’s Most Honest Quotes About Her Mental Health Struggle Before 2022 Death: Depression ‘Stole Time From Me’

An open book. Naomi Judd was vocal about her battle with mental illness and depression before her April 2022 death at the age of 76. “[Fans] see me in rhinestones, you know, with glitter in my hair, that really is who I am,” the musician told Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts in December 2016. “But then I would come home and not leave the house for three weeks, and not get out of my pajamas, and not practice normal hygiene. It was really bad.” The former Judds member — who detailed her depression issues in her 2016 River of Time memoir — told The Palm Beach Post that during her lowest times, she grappled with the idea of taking her own life. “I know what it’s like to go down to the bridge and be ready to jump off,” she told the outlet in 2016, noting that she was fighting to come out on top. “It’s going through it that’s exquisitely harrowing. You have to have somebody to watch you, somebody to make sure you are on the right meds. My husband [Larry Strickland] hasn’t let me out of his sight in two-and-a-half years.” Naomi sang alongside her eldest daughter, Wynonna Judd, for nearly a decade before stepping back from music in 1991 to deal with her Hepatitis C diagnosis. The duo later reunited for multiple shows and another record, but in 2010, Naomi began battling severe depression. “I’m trying to start a national conversation about depression and anxiety,” she told Today’s Savannah Guthrie while promoting her book in December 2017. “There are 43 million of us out there. I want to let the world know that it’s not a character flaw. It’s a disease.” [jwplayer 95XyhnLK-zhNYySv2] The “Girls Night Out” musician added: “We don’t make enough of the good neurochemicals in the brain. It’s a disease. It has nothing to do with our character.” Naomi noted that her public persona could no longer mask what was going on inside her head, which is when she began seeking treatment. “I used [to] say to myself, looking in the mirror, ‘I'm Naomi freaking Judd. I got this.’ I even wrote it out and taped it there,” she wrote in a December 2017 essay for NBC News. “But when the problem is your brain, when the problem involves the way that you're thinking and the way you're living every day of your life, you can't pull that off anymore.” Her family, which also includes daughter Ashley Judd, eventually stepped in to get her help. “Ashley is so grounded, so she was more administrative. She was on the phone booking flights, telling me, ‘OK, Mom. This is what we're going to do now.’ Wy is more emotional: She would come over and get in bed with me, and just hug me, and hold on to me,” Naomi recalled. “And Larry is so constant; he was always there for me. If I was somewhere in treatment, he would get the closest motel, and be there with me every visiting hour.” The “Love Can Build a Bridge” singer appeared to be in better spirits in early 2022 when she and Wynonna, 57, performed at the CMT Music Awards that April, marking their last duet together. However, later that month her daughters confirmed her death on April 30. Scroll down to see Naomi’s most poignant quotes about mental health through the years: [podcast_block]

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Depression ‘Stole Time’ From Her

"I had plenty of reasons to jump out of bed every morning. Never did I expect that only months after the Encore tour [in 2010] ended, I would feel I had every reason to jump off a bridge to end my tortured existence,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir, adding that depression “stole time from me” amid her career.

She further explained: "I was unaware that I had post-traumatic stress disorder from pathological situations and issues passed down through generations along with the traumatic events of my own life."

Naomi pointed out in the book’s dedication that her loved ones never stopped trying to help her get through the dark times. "I was never blinded to the compassion from my beloveds who continually reached down with loving hands and lifted me out of my harrowing nightmare of despair," she wrote.

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Life Out of the Limelight

“When I came off the tour, I went into this deep, dark, absolutely terrifying hole and I couldn’t get out,” she confessed during a December 2016 Good Morning America appearance. “I spent two years on my couch.”

Naomi explained that she eventually sought treatment for the depression. “What I've been through is extreme,” she said. “They tried me on every single thing they had in their arsenal.”

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Being ‘Mamma Judd’

“I think I was so stinking busy with this fabulous adventure — on the stage with the bright lights, thousands of fans every night, singing with Wy on the bus. It’s as if that suited me so well that when I did interviews, I couldn’t really tell the truth because I didn’t want to bring people down,” the Kentucky native told The Palm Beach Post in 2016 as to why she didn’t speak out earlier. “It didn’t fit the image they had of Mamma Judd. I just kept shoving it down and repressing it.”

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It Immobilizes You

“This [depression] lasted forever. I didn’t get off my couch for two years,” she said during a December 2017 appearance on the Today show, noting her symptoms first started in 2011. “I was so depressed that I couldn’t move.”

The former nurse said: “I wouldn't even brush my teeth. I wouldn't get out of my pjs. My husband and my girlfriends and [daughter] Ashley would come over and I would just go upstairs and lock the door to my bedroom. … You become immobilized.”

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Suicidal Thoughts

Naomi explained during her 2017 Today show interview that she struggled with the idea of killing herself before she sought professional treatment. “That’s how bad it can get,” she told Guthrie at the time. “It’s hard to describe. You go down in this deep, dark hole of depression and you don’t think that there’s another minute. It’s so horrific you can’t think of another day.”

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Her Traumatic Upbringing

“My life had been traumatic: I'd gone without any support, financial or emotional when I was younger, and I never had anybody that was watching out for me or being my mentor,” Naomi wrote in an essay for NBC News published in December 2017. “I never dealt with all the stuff that happened to me, so it came out sideways, as depression and anxiety. Depression is partly genetic, and I have it on both sides of my family.”

In her book, the country icon revealed that she was assaulted as a child by her uncle, which is a buried memory that she had to confront amid her mental health treatments. She also detailed the highs and lows of being a teenage mom.

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Breaking Down the Numbers

Naomi revealed in her 2017 NBC News essay that after working with the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill and the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, she learned that there are “almost 44 million people in America that experience mental illness in a given year.” That statistic fueled her efforts to destigmatize mental illness.

“It's staggering how many people that is — 44 million,” she wrote. “If you've got a pulse, then you're fighting some battle, whether it's a diagnosis of depression, like 16 million people, or one of anxiety, like 42 million people, or something else. And there's power in numbers: it means that there are other people. You're not alone.”

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Suicide Outreach

During Mental Awareness Week in October 2018, Naomi penned an open letter alongside physician Daniel R. Weinberger, M.D. about suicide in America.

“People who commit suicide are experiencing problems with mood, impulse control and aggression, all of which involve discrete circuits in the brain that regulate these aspects of human experience, but we still don’t understand how these circuits go haywire in the brains of suicide victims,” the letter read. “Right now about six times as many people in the United States die by taking their own lives as do from HIV/AIDS or heart disease, but the money to study suicide is lacking.”

She wrote that “it’s about time we do better” when it comes to research and funding for suicide prevention after citing a study that revealed “heart disease researchers receive 29 times the amount of federal funds than suicide and suicide prevention scientists. In fact, the federal government spent more money last year to study dietary supplements than to understand why Americans decide to take their own lives.”