“I didn’t understand depression,” Winfrey admits in The Me You Can’t See. “What do you mean, you’re depressed? That’s coming from someone who had done lots of shows about depression.” As just one example: Back in the 2000s, when she opened her Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, she was stunned to see that the ambitious young women she’d chosen for the school were struggling and, in several cases, attempting suicide. In The Me You Can’t See, she recalls that a doctor told her, “Your kids have trauma,” adding that she didn’t feel “prepared to deal with the trauma of the mental illness, the depression, the anxiety.” Of course, the fact that comprehension proved challenging for Winfrey over the years never stopped her from diving into depression and other taboo topics through her show, her magazine and other outlets. “My life gets better when I think I can help other people in any way,” she says in the series. “I’ve sort of spent a career, a lifetime, a purpose doing that.” With all episodes of The Me You Can’t See now available for streaming on Apple TV+, here’s a look back at Winfrey’s advocacy work to bring mental health issues to the forefront, as well as a look at the personal demons she’s had to face.
Oprah Winfrey was sexually and physically abused as a child
“At 9 and 10 and 11 and 12 years old, I was raped by my 19-year-old cousin,” Winfrey says through tears in The Me You Can’t See’s first installment. “I didn’t know what rape was. Certainly, I wasn’t aware of the word. I had no idea what sex was…I had no idea where babies came from. I didn’t even know what was happening to me. And I kept that secret and it’s just something that I accepted.” Winfrey recalled in a conversation with David Letterman in 2012 that her repeated sexual assaults led to her becoming pregnant at age 14, ultimately giving birth to a son who she lost two weeks later. Winfrey also speaks up in the doc about the physical trauma she endured at the hands of her grandmother, who whipped her “at 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 years old.” Despite such unimaginable circumstances, Winfrey told Hoda Kotb this week that she’s grateful for all that she’s experienced—even the bad. “I wouldn’t take anything for having been raised the way that I was,” she said. “It is because I was sexually abused, raped, that I have such empathy for people who’ve experienced that.”
Oprah dedicated an issue of O Magazine to mental health in 2016
“You are not alone!” Winfrey declared in a February 2016 cover headline of her eponymous magazine. “We’re starting a conversation about anxiety, depression, help and hope.” Inside the issue, she admitted that mental health crises have afflicted her friends and family at a startling rate. “In recent years I’ve come face-to-face with mental illness, as several people close to me were hospitalized with severe suicidal depression and manic and schizophrenic thoughts,” she explained. “More than once I’ve sat in the psych ward waiting to hear the diagnosis.” She added, “We, as a culture, have not fully acknowledged how much help is needed. The only real shame is on us for not being willing to speak openly. We need to start talking, and we need to start now.” She also ruminated on the stigmas surrounding mental illness in her regular column inside the mag, “What I Know For Sure.” Said Winfrey, “I’m a good talker. But I soon learned that you can’t talk someone out of depression. Mental illness is real. And like everything else in life, it operates on a spectrum. Though there are common symptoms, everyone experiences it differently…So many people live in shame, hiding their struggles, not seeking help.” As just one way to help her readers develop a better understanding of the issue, Winfrey also recommended author SheilaWalsh’s 2014 self-help book, The Storm Inside: Trade the Chaos of How You Feel for the Truth of Who You Are.
Oprah opened up about her own bout of depression in 2017
After decades of fostering conversation around mental illness and helping others share their struggles, Winfrey finally revealed details about her own spell of depression in 2017. That’s the year she told Vogue that the failure of her 1998 movie Beloved at the box office—which came about despite the fact that Winfrey herself was acting in her first feature film role since the mid-1980s—prompted what she called a “long plunge into food and depression and suppressing all my feelings.” As she described that problematic period of her life, “I actually started to think, Maybe I really am depressed. Because it’s more than ‘I feel bad about this.’ I felt like I was behind a veil. I felt like what many people had described over the years on my show, and I could never imagine it. What’s depression? Why don’t you just pick yourself up?”
Meghan Markle admitted her suicidal thoughts to Oprah on 60 Minutes
In one of the most talked-about TV events this year, Prince Harry and wife Meghan Markle talked candidly with Oprah about how the pressures of royal life harmed them mentally and emotionally—especially Markle. “I just didn’t see a solution. It was all happening just because I was breathing,” she said. “I just didn’t want to be alive anymore. That was a very clear and real and frightening constant thought.”
Oprah published a book on trauma, resilience and healing in 2021
The Me You Can’t See isn’t Winfrey’s only project this year that aims to tackle mental health stigmas and bring solutions to those suffering from mental illness. Last month, she collaborated with trauma expert BrucePerry, M.D., Ph.D., to publish What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience and Healing. The book aims to explain, decipher and de-stigmatize the scientific and psychological reasons behind troubling behaviors. “No matter what happened to you, it’s not too late. You do have a chance to rewrite the script,” Winfrey said in a recent sitdown with Perry on her OWN series, Super Soul. To those who are struggling, she says in the Q&A that there is a silver lining: “You can use all of these things—experiences, good and bad in your life—to allow you to have post-traumatic wisdom instead of stress about it.” Next, see what Prince Harry said about Meghan’s suicidal thoughts in his new doc.
