An outspoken advocate for mental health, Naomi Judd opened up about her struggles with suicidal depression in her 2016 book River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged With Hope. She also wrote an open letter about suicide for Mental Health Awareness Week in 2018.
“To understand this issue better, we have to bring the study of suicide into mainstream neuroscience and treat the condition like every other brain disorder,” she wrote. “People who commit suicide are experiencing problems with mood, impulse control and aggression, all of which involve discrete circuits in the brain that regulate these aspects of human experience, but we still don’t understand how these circuits go haywire in the brains of suicide victims.”
Naomi and her daughter Wynonna recently reunited on stage at the CMT Music Awards, in what was their first TV performance in 20 years. They were also set to perform on a 10-date, nearly sold-out arena tour, The Final Tour, which was scheduled to begin in September. The Judds, who scored 14 No. 1 hits on the country music charts between 1983 and 1991, were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame on Sunday, and Wynonna and Ashley gave tearful speeches at the ceremony.
“I’m going to make this fast because my heart’s broken, and I feel so blessed,” Wynonna said. “It’s a very strange dynamic to be this broken and this blessed.”