Brooke Shields: I Wanted to Drive My Car Into a Wall
Legendary model and actress reveals suicidal thoughts and stigma of depression
By DANIEL MACHT
Updated 1:39 AM PDT, Tue, Nov 17, 2009
Brooke Shields said she once contemplated ending her life by driving her car into a wall, but didn’t because her baby was in the back seat.
The legendary model and screen star said a friend talked her down from the suicidal plan. Shields said she couldn’t help but resent her young daughter at the time for “ruining this for me.”
The former child star — who has spoken before of her struggles with post-partum depression — revealed the full extent of her bleak mental state at her darkest hours when accepting an advocacy award from the Hope for Depression Research Foundation in Manhattan on Monday, People reports.
Shields said had she been diagnosed with any other disease she “would have run to get help.”
Instead, the "stigma" of depression kept her from recognizing the full extent of her problems, she said.
"We think and we feel that we should just be able to handle it on our own," she said, adding that she grew up in an “addictive household.”
The depression started when she gave birth to daughter Rowan in 2003 after having had a miscarriage and attempting IVF seven times, Shields said.
"I finally had a healthy beautiful baby girl and I couldn't look at her," she said, according to People. "I couldn't hold her and I couldn't sing to her and I couldn't smile at her...All I wanted to do was disappear and die."
She said she thought the pills she was prescribed at one point were unnecessary so she stopped taking them.
"That was the week I almost did not resist driving my car straight into a wall on the side of the freeway," Shields said.
Eventually, she was diagnosed with a chemical imbalance and realized that she “wasn’t doing anything wrong,” just depressed.
It was "actually out of my control,” she said.
First Published: Nov 17, 2009 1:20 AM PDT
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