Naomi Judd died by SUICIDE after longtime struggle with mental illness, claims report
Multiple sources have confirmed the cause of Naomi Judd's death. According to PEOPLE, the Grammy-winning country singer died by suicide on Saturday, April 30, at the age of 76, following a long battle with mental illness. Earlier, in a statement on Monday, May 2, Public Information Officer Williamson said, "It’s an open investigation, currently we are not releasing any reports, 911 calls, or bodycam or dashcam footage. This is a death investigation that is ongoing. There is no police jurisdiction in that area, so only the sheriff’s department attended. We are awaiting information from the detectives from the criminal investigation division."
Ashley and Wynonna Judd, Judd's daughters, also revealed Naomi's death on Instagram and Twitter by adding, "Today we sisters experienced a tragedy. We lost our beautiful mother to the disease of mental illness," they said. "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."
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Previously, according to the PEOPLE, in her 2016 book 'River of Time: My Descent into Depression and How I Emerged With Hope', Naomi Judd, an active advocate for mental health, spoke up about her experiences with suicidal depression. She talked about how being diagnosed with hepatitis C in 1990 changed her life in her book. She wrote about her post-traumatic stress disorder, "Had plenty of reasons to jump out of bed every morning. Never did I expect that only months after the Encore tour [in 2010] ended, I would feel I had every reason to jump off a bridge to end my tortured existence."
During Mental Health Awareness Week in 2018, she also released an open letter about suicide. She wrote, "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. 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 brain of suicide victims."
Meanwhile, according to The Associated Press, The Judds, were inducted into the ‘Country Music Hall of Fame’ on Sunday, May 1, in Nashville, Tennessee just one day after Naomi's unexpected death. During the event, Wynonna and Ashley gave tearful speeches about her late mom. Naomi’s daughter Wynonna said, "I'm going to make this fast because my heart's broken, and I feel so blessed. It's a very strange dynamic to be this broken and this blessed."
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Hotline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).