Jameela Jamil Just Opened Up About Her Suicide Attempt In Emotional Tweet

From Prevention

• Jameela Jamil, 33, opened up about her mental health in an emotional tweet for World Mental Health Day, which was on Thursday, October 10.

• The Good Place actress said that she once tried to take her own life, and encouraged others to seek help if they're struggling with mental illness.

• Jamil undergoes psychotherapy to treat her severe PTSD.

Good Place actress Jameela Jamil just opened up about her suicide attempt in a vulnerable tweet on October 10, World Mental Health Day. Jamil, who has never before spoken about her attempt at taking her own life, encouraged others struggling with mental illness to seek help if they need it.

“Today is #WorldMentalHealthDay,” she wrote in the tweet. “This month, 6 years ago, I tried to take my own life. I’m so lucky that I survived, and went on to use EMDR to treat my severe PTSD. I urge you to hang on just a bit longer and ask for help if you need it. Because things can turn around. I promise.”

In a followup tweet, Jamil wrote, “There is so much work to do in Improving awareness and mental health care, and we need to further de-stigmatize the conversation around asking for help. While you’re gathering the strength, I recommend the work of @matthaig1 @Ayishat_Akanbi and @scarcurtis ALL my love to you.”

Jamil has previously opened up about some "traumatic" experiences in her life, such as anorexia in her teens, a car accident that bound her to bed for a year when she was 17, anxiety, depression, and being raped in her 20s. The star then developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), but a type of therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) helped her recover.

"For a long time I had severe PTSD. EMDR pretty much used a magic trick. It removed my trauma," Jamil told The Sunday Times. "I can remember horrific things and feel like they happened to other people. I couldn't have kept myself together without it."

In a mental health awareness post that she shared to Instagram, Jamil said that she feels lucky to be able to seek help through therapy. "Not everyone is lucky enough to be able to access affordable therapy. But if you can’t, in the mean time, there are helplines (@crisistextline @giveusashoutinsta) and community groups online around the world and friends and family who might surprise you as to how supportive they can be," she wrote in the caption.

"It’s not something you have to tolerate on your own. You have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. I feel you. I’ve been there," she continued. "It’s a process of radical self forgiveness, patience and care that will help you out. It feels like the pain, nightmares and exhaustion will never end sometimes, but they can. And they will.❤️

At 33, Jamil has learned to treat her body "with great respect" and checks in with it, thanking it for all that it does for her.

"I'm aware of what it's like to not be able to go to the toilet by myself, or to be able to breathe because I had asthma, or be able to hear, because I was deaf as a child," she told Elle in an interview. I also stopped menstruating when I had an eating disorder, so my body has been in jeopardy so many times that I've, frankly, by the age of thirty, a little bit late but better late than never, learned to treat it with lots of kindness and respect."

"I don't talk shit to myself anymore. Every time it crops up I stick up for myself the way that I would for a friend or for a stranger even," she continued. "The things that women say to themselves in their head, they would never tolerate being said to someone that they love. So I've decided to be my own best friend."

If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

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