Michelle Williams talks depression while in Destiny’s Child, suicidal thoughts

On a recent appearance on The Talk, Michelle Williams admitted that she was suicidal when Destiny's Child was at the height of its fame.

TheGrio Staff

Oct 19, 2017

Michelle Williams has not been shy about opening up about her past battles with depression, but on a recent appearance on The Talk, she admitted that her depression eventually turned suicidal thoughts after the group disbanded.

Williams spoke out about the need for a more open discussion of mental illness, saying, “I think at the age of 25, had I had a name to what I was feeling at the time, I would have disclosed that I’ve been suffering from depression.”

“I didn’t know until I was in my thirties what was going on,” she added.

She went on to say that it was a more common problem than people let on: “So many people are walking around acting like they got it all together, you know, and they’re suffering.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHYNSaW6Ttw

She then spoke to her own experience suffering from depression, saying that when she told her manager, Mathew Knowles, she was depressed, he waved her off, pointing out the multimillion dollar deal Destiny’s Child had just signed and saying, “What do you have to be depressed about?”

“So I was like, ‘Oh, maybe I’m just tired,'” Williams recalled.

“I think he wanted me to be grateful, which I was, but I was still sad,” she added.

“I want to normalize this mental health discussion,” she continued before she went on to say that she had never told anyone it had gotten bad enough that she was suicidal.

“I was too in that place where it got so dark and heavy, because sometimes you feel like … ‘What do I do?’ I wanted out,” she said.

Williams also spoke to the need to get out of the culture of keeping depression under wraps and keeping it between yourself and God when it comes to a point that you need medical help.

“Depression doesn’t mean lazy; self-harm don’t mean you want attention. It’s not any of that.”