'Good Morning America': Ginger Zee Emotionally Details Suicide Attempts

The 'Good Morning America' favorite stresses that smiles on the surface don't always have happiness underneath.

By Andrew Roberts

Ginger Zee doesn't shy away from tackling problems and admit her own issues head-on, reflecting on her own struggles and establishing them as fuel to move forward. In a recent social media post, Zee looks back on one of her darkest periods.

According to Good Morning America's official site, Zee's new post highlighted a moment where she had attempted suicide for the second time. "That picture says to me, 'Here's a person who is trying so hard to hide what she was truly feeling,'" Zee wrote. "It was one of my darkest points in all of my mental health journey, and my smile is so forced and is so big."

The takeaway Zee wants her fans and onlookers to grab onto is how sometimes a person can appear to be smiling and functioning, but they could also be struggling with mental health and depression. "I hope that me talking about it can help distinguish for people that just because you look bright and sunny does not mean that that is what's happening on the inside," Zee added. "All of us are complex human beings. We are also allowed to have a really big smile one day and a non-smile the next day."

Zee continues by noting her mental health struggles actually first popped up at her younger age and went unaddressed, struck to the shadows by the stigma of discussing mental health in the 1980s and '90s. As Zee notes, people just were ignorant of how you're supposed to handle such things. And parents typically relied on their own upbringing, sometimes trying to stick a square peg in a round hole.

"A lot of times they'll say, 'I would have never known you were that sick, or you were that deep into something,'" Zee added. "That's fine because you can't see it. That's what makes it hard every time, and that's what makes it tough for people to be able to react or not know how to react."

Zee revealed that she struggled with anorexia as a young girl, then would later go on medication to treat narcolepsy in college, with the med creating a path for the extreme side of depression to develop. This led to Zee's first suicide attempt.

Thankfully neither time was effective and Zee is still here, hoping her story can help others in similar spots. Young women in puberty are at the greatest risk for major depression and mental disorders, according to GMA.

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