Harry Potter Author J.K. Rowling Had "Suicidal Thoughts"

Rowling, now 42, was in her mid-20s when her "life circumstances were poor and I really plummeted."

She was a single mother (she had just split from journalist Jorge Arantes) and a struggling writer. (Rowling – now worth an estimated $1 billion – said her friends had to help her pay the security deposit for her apartment.)

She said she found counseling "absolutely invaluable.

"We're talking suicidal thoughts here, we're not talking 'I'm a little bit miserable,'" she told an Edinburgh University student magazine.

"The thing that made me face the fact that this was not a normal state that I was in was probably my daughter [Jessica].

"She was something that earthed me, grounded me, and I thought, 'This isn't right, this can't be right, she cannot grow up in this state,'" Rowling added.

With her regular doctor away at the time of her depression, she began seeing a therapist who "absolutely saved me."

Rowling said she has "never been remotely ashamed of having been depressed. Never.

"I think I'm abnormally shameless on that account because what's to be ashamed of?"

She said she urges anybody suffering from depression to "go and get help.

"I went through a really rough time," Rowling added, "and I'm quite proud of the fact that I got out of that."

2464 hcarroll Published 3/24/08   Message Add to Friends