LONDON — Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling says she was once so depressed that she considered taking her own life.
Speaking to an Edinburgh University student magazine, the 42-year-old Rowling confesses she was extremely depressed in the early 1990s after she separated from her first husband, journalist Jorge Arantes.
"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,' " Rowling says. "Mid-twenties life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted."
At the time, Rowling says she relied on friends to help pay the security deposit for her apartment, where she would eventually begin writing about the boy wizard. She credits her daughter, an infant at the time, for pushing her to seek help.
"The thing that made me face the fact that this was not a normal state that I was in was probably my daughter [Jessica]," Rowling explains.
"She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, 'This isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up in this state,'" she adds.
With her regular doctor away, Rowling says she went to see a therapist who "absolutely saved me."
"The funny thing is, I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never," Rowling says. "I think I'm abnormally shameless on that account because what's to be ashamed of?"
Rowling urges anyone suffering from depression to "go and get help" and says that she's living proof that the battle can be won.
"I went through a really rough time," Rowling says, "and I'm quite proud of the fact that I got out of that."
- Comment
