Daytime Emmy winner Maurice Benard says he contemplated suicide during pandemic

LOS ANGELES: Three-time Daytime Emmy winner Maurice Benard, who has been battling bipolar disorder, revealed that he contemplated suicide during the pandemic.

The actor, 60, who plays mobster Sonny Corinthos in ‘General Hospital’, told People magazine in an interview that he thought about ending his life “every day” during the lockdown.

During the pandemic lockdown, his ‘GH’ soap had shut down for four months and his tour across the country for his memoir ‘Nothing General About It: How Love (and Lithium) Saved Me On and Off General Hospital’ was put on hold.

He said that while at the time what he would say out loud was, “Okay,” what was going on in his head was very different. “I 'got it' but thought in my mind, ‘It’s the end of the world, too’.”

“I felt a real cold rush in me,” he told the magazine. “And then that night I was shaking like a fish out of water and crying like a baby. This had never happened in my life. [His wife] Paula’s on the bed and I’m like, ‘Baby, I’m done. What’s going on with me?’ In a calm voice, she says, ‘Honey, you’re fine. You’re gonna be fine.’ And I’m like, ‘What the f— what do you mean. I’m gonna be fine?’ I was stuck in this horrific panic that wouldn’t leave.”

Benard then started a podcast called ‘State of Mind’, talking with fellow actors about every aspect of mental health. That release did help a lot, and it still does, he said.

His book tour turned into Zoom interviews rather than travelling the country.

He revealed that he’d be talking with Dr Oz or Dr Drew or Charlemagne, the God on Zoom: “And what I really wanted to say was, ‘I'm gonna die. Can somebody please save me?’"

"It wouldn't go away. And it was bad,” Benard said, confessing that he would look at the tree in front of his house and think about taking his own life.

“I was just figuring it out because I didn't want to use a gun because it's messy and ugly. That's what I thought about every day — the tree. And, I just did everything that I possibly could to survive.”

He was 22 when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1985.