Sharon Osbourne Reveals She Attempted Suicide 3 Years Ago: ‘I Just Couldn’t Bear It’

In honor of World Mental Health Day, Sharon Osbourne is bravely opening up about her struggle with mental health, telling her co-hosts on The Talk about the time she attempted suicide in 2016. On Thursday’s episode, the 68-year-old reflected on the attempt and checking into a mental health facility to undergo treatment.

“Four years ago I was finding things very, very difficult and … I tried to take my life and it wasn’t for attention. I just couldn’t bear it,” she said, adding that Sheryl Underwood knew about the attempt. “I remember that time, and I remember us wanting to give you your space and your privacy,” Underwood agreed.

“I went to a place to get help,” Osbourne continued, recalling how she met two young girls in the rehabilitation facility who were struggling with addiction and whose mothers had died by suicide. “They told me they were drinking and using drugs … both of them, their mothers had [died by] suicide. And it messed them up so bad, that they couldn’t cope with their lives, and that shocked me into — come on, am I going to do this to my family, my babies? No way. And that shocked me; it was like an electric shock, and it was like, get it together.”

“It was like, ‘Look at these two girls. If I try this again, this could be my kids,’” Osbourne said. She shares three kids with husband Ozzy Osbourne: son Jack, 34, and daughters Kelly, 35, and Aimée, 37.

While Osbourne opened up about her mental health journey in order to spread awareness for World Mental Health Day, which is coming on Saturday, it isn’t the first time she has done so. In 2019, she revealed three past suicide attempts she survived over the years. Though she admitted to often making light of the situation, she acknowledged how difficult it can be to keep going. “I was joking about this but I shouldn’t — talking about my depression,” she said at the time. “And it’s like, you know, saying, ‘Oh, the first time I tried to kill myself was okay, the second, all right, the third time, oye!’”

“But it’s like, I’m still here. I still do what I do and you struggle,” continued Osbourne. “I wish everybody could think flowers and daisies and princesses, but you can’t.”

In November 2014, she said on The Talk that she suffered from depression and had been taking medication for 16 years at that time. She said that “some days are better than others, and some days you feel like you just want to pull the sheets over your head and just stay in that bed and not do a damn thing except rot.”

Two years after that, she said that she experienced a mental health breakdown resulting in a five-week emergency leave of absence from the CBS talk show after her family admitted her into a facility. “I think if you are born with [depression] you have it all your life, and it’s an ongoing battle, so it’s an ongoing thing of realizing how blessed you are and what you got to be happy about in the day, and I have so much,” she later told Access Hollywood.