Naomi Judd, a Grammy-winning vocalist who died on Saturday at the age of 76, had previously acknowledged to receiving electro-shock treatment and having pondered suicide in the recent past.
A statement from her daughters said that Judd died “to the disease of mental illness”. She was the lead vocalist of the group The Judds and the mother of Ashley and Wynonna Judd.
When The Judds stopped touring, she said she didn’t get off the sofa for two years, slipping into “severe” and “extreme” depression.
“[Fans] see me in rhinestones, you know, with glitter in my hair, that really is who I am,” she said. “But then I would come home and not leave the house for three weeks, and not get out of my pyjamas, and not practice normal hygiene. It was really bad.
“When I came off the tour I went into this deep, dark absolutely terrifying hole and I couldn’t get out,” she added. “I spent two years on my couch.”
She claimed to have even searched out a bridge close to her family’s farm from which she might jump.
‘That’s how bad it can get,’ she said. ‘It’s hard to describe. You go down in this deep, dark hole of depression and you don’t think that there’s another minute.’
She said that one night, her husband and daughter Ashley called 911, and she was then sent to treatment, where she finally had ECT (electroshock therapy) to ‘jump start’ her brain’s chemicals.
“We are shattered. We are navigating profound grief and know that as we loved her, she was loved by her public. We are in unknown territory,” the Judd sisters said.
Naomi Judd has talked openly and authored books about her problems with mental health concerns over the years before her death.
A total of 14 No. 1 hits were achieved by the mother-daughter duo throughout the course of their almost three-decade long career.
