Bridgerton star Ruby Barker was recently hospitalized for her mental health issues and thanked prominent TV producer and screenwriter Shonda Rhimes for “saving” her life.
Barker, who plays Marina Thompson on the popular Netflix series since it first debuted in 2020, took to Instagram to open up about her hospital visit and the state of her mental health.
“Mental health week is every week for me. Off my chest. I feel like I’ve not been completely honest, so this is for my followers,” she wrote in the post’s caption on May 26. “Time to be transparent. I’ve been struggling since Bridgerton. This is the truth. Thank you all for supporting me. Your love holds me up #mentalhealthawareness.”
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In an attached video clip, the 25-year-old continued, saying she received a diagnosis and, as such, treatments for her condition. However, she didn’t explicitly tell her followers what she was diagnosed with.
“I just want to be honest with everybody: I have been struggling. So I’m in the hospital at the minute,” Barker said. “I’m gonna get discharged soon and hopefully get to continue with my life….all this intergenerational trauma [was] bundled up inside me. I was carrying the weight of the world on my back. Now I’m at a point where I have a diagnosis. I will talk to you about that at another time, but I have a diagnosis, and I am relinquishing myself and forgiving myself and drawing a line in the sand. I can’t carry on the way that I’ve been carrying on, and I need to change. And that’s what I’m trying to do.”
She also encouraged others who have been going through similar struggles as her to “take a break.”
“I’m gonna take a little bit of a break for myself, and I wanna encourage others. If you are struggling, please do yourself a favor and take a break. Stop being so hard on yourself. People always used to tell me don’t be hard on myself, and I never really knew what that meant.”
The British actress then thanked Netflix, Rhimes, and Rhimes’ production company, Shondaland, for “saving” her. Rhimes is one of the executive producers of Bridgerton.
“I need to thank Netflix, Shonda Rhimes, and Shondaland…for saving me,” Barker said.
She concluded her video saying she didn’t want her diagnosis to be “a self-fulfilling prophecy” and that she was looking forward to a good career and life.
“I cannot wait to fulfill all of my engagements and to have a good career and a good life. Because I do not want my diagnosis to be a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Barker added. “I want to survive, and I will survive, and I’m going to. And so are you.
