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J.K. Rowling: I contemplated suicide

J.K. Rowling (file photo)

LONDON: J.K. Rowling has disclosed that she contemplated suicide as a struggling single mother after the breakdown of her first marriage and had to seek professional help.

Timely counselling helped her pull back from the brink. And the rest, of course, is history.

Ms. Rowling(42) has spoken previously about her struggle with poverty and how she suffered depression after breaking off with her first husband Jorge Arantes, a Portuguese journalist, but this is the first time she has publicly revealed that she toyed with the idea of taking her own life.

Ms. Rowling, who is counted as among the world’s richest persons with an estimated personal wealth of £545 million earned on the back of the phenomenal success of the Potter series, told a Scottish journalist, that she “really plummeted” after the collapse of her marriage and was tormented by “suicidal thoughts.”

But for her little daughter, she may have simply gone under.

“The thing that made me go for help was probably my daughter. She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought this isn’t right, she cannot grow up with me in this state,” she told Adeel Amini, a young journalist who writes for an Edinburgh University magazine.

Ms. Rowling, whose Potter books have been translated into more than 60 languages sold 400 million copies, wrote the first book of the series sitting in a café in Edinburgh because there wasn’t enough room in her cramped flat.

She said she decided to speak out in order to “challenge” the stigma associated with mentally-related problems.

“I have never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. What’s there to be ashamed of? I went through a really tough time and I am quite proud that I got out of that,” she said.

Her remarks were welcomed by mental health campaigners who said that as a “wonderful role model” it was good that she had decided to talk about the issue.

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