Earlier today we sent out a NY Times column from Jennifer Finney Boylan about the mental health impact of Corona to her loved one. Listed below is a first person account of the mental health impact of the pandemic from Morning America Meteorologist Ginger Zee. Article from the New York Post is listed below.
Remember there is help available if your mental health is impacted by COVID—19
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255
NYS Emotional Support Line
1-844-863—9314
Our website at www.mhanys.org is filled with resources for those in great need. In addition, there are links to resources through the Office of Mental Health at https://omh.ny.gov/omhweb/covid-19-resources.html
Ginger Zee gives mental health update: ‘I see the darkness’
By Leah Bitsky
May 12, 2020 | 1:40pm
Ginger Zee, who suffers from depression, says she feels the darkness creeping in amid the coronavirus pandemic.
“I wake up some mornings, still, and I see the darkness,” she wrote on Instagram for Mental Health Awareness Month. “I feel it’s slow creep, like blinds on the windows on a timer. Slowly closing, trying to take me on a spiral down. Telling me to isolate, drink, avoid.”
ABC News’ chief meteorologist said she feels the urge to turn to certain vices to fight off her feelings.
“I want to run away to a warm deck somewhere, cry and drink an entire bottle of wine. Smoke a pack of cigarettes. Numb my brain and throw my phone in a lake,” she wrote.
But the 39-year-old said she is able to turn to other ways of coping, writing: “Thankfully now I can pull myself out of the spiral these days. I didn’t always have the tools. I didn’t always think I had purpose. I can talk myself out of the darkness for at least an hour or two. I anticipate that will happen today.”
She also shares her feelings with her support system: her husband, PIX11 reporter Ben Aaron, her mother and her therapist.
“I’m fighting the darkness today. And I still have fear that today is the day I won’t be able to fight as well as I have for the last ten years,” she also wrote. “Despite that fear, I am not going to stop fighting. You shouldn’t either.”
In 2017, Zee — who authored the candid memoir “Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One,” — revealed that she had attempted suicide at 21 years old. She also began starving herself at just 10 years old.
Zee and Aaron are the parents of two children.
She has been shooting “Good Morning America” from home amid the pandemic.
https://pagesix.com/2020/05/12/ginger-zee-gives-mental-health-update-i-see-the-darkness/
