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Sarah on Ellen

Modern Family's Sarah Hyland discussed returning from the brink of suicide at 26

‘I would write letters in my head.’

CW: Article contains reference to depression, suicide and sexual assault.

“I WOULD WRITE letters in my head to loved ones of why I did it, my reasoning behind it, how it was nobody’s fault,” Sarah Hyland told Ellen DeGeneres while appearing on her show this week.

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The letters were to be Sarah’s suicide notes – a final indication of how depressed she had become living with chronic pain for the vast majority of her life.

The 28-year-old Modern Family actress, who has undergone 16 surgeries over the course of her life including two kidney transplants in the last six years, also has endometriosis and, as she put it, ‘a whole slew of things’.

After a failed kidney transplant meant she had to go on dialysis, Sarah, who opened up last year about her experience of sexual assault in high school, found herself sinking into a period of depression.

After 26 or 27 years of always being sick, being in chronic pain every single day, and you don’t know when you’re going to have the next good day; it’s really, really hard.

When asked by Ellen how close she got to taking her own life, Sarah replied: “I was very, very, very, very close.”

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Despite having what she understands is seen as an ‘amazing job and an amazing support system’, Sarah chose not to disclose how she was feeling for fear that her loved ones would interfere.

“I didn’t want anybody to know that I was that close. Because if they knew they would try to persuade me,” she remembers.

And yet Sarah recalls that the turning point in her thought process came when she finally opened up to someone.

I finally said it out loud to someone. I had been saying ‘I need to go to see a therapist. I think I need to go see a therapist again’. And they’re like ‘No, no, Why would you see someone? You can talk to me.’ And then I said it out loud and they were like ‘Oh you need to see a therapist’.

“Saying it out loud helped immensely because I kept it to myself for months and months at a time. Saying it out loud really helped,” Sarah reiterated. “Saying it out loud puts everything into perspective.”

In the aftermath of the interview, Twitter was awash with posts paying tribute to Sarah’s honesty while sharing her story.

Tweet by @Halie Duncan Halie Duncan / Twitter Halie Duncan / Twitter / Twitter

You can watch the interview here.

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