'Good Morning America's Ginger Zee Opens Up About Her Struggle With Crippling Depression and Seeking Help

Ginger Zee
Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images

The 36-year-old meteorologist revealed that she checked herself into a mental hospital to seek treatment.

Ginger Zee is getting candid about the struggles she's been through.

The 36-year-old ABC News chief meteorologist sat down with her Good Morning America colleague Robin Roberts on Tuesday to talk about her new memoir, Natural Disaster: I Cover Them, I Am One, which goes into detail about her battle with depression and how in 2011 she checked herself into a mental hospital to seek treatment.

"I fought a disease called depression that a lot of people fight every, single day," Zee explained. "And just like any disease there is a stigma or, unlike other diseases, there is a stigma surrounding it. And I want to help the hundreds of thousands or millions that are dealing with or dealt with something I did. And I want them to be able to fight without shame."

Roberts praised Zee for not holding back and even admitting that she thought about taking her own life.

"I start the book by saying, 'Ten days before I started my job at ABC News I checked myself into a mental health hospital,'" Zee shared. "And that took a lot of guts to start there and bury the lede. There's some joy in there. There is a lot of comedy. There's a lot of other things, but you need to get to the crux of it and that is, I had a disease. I will always have that disease. It's not something that just magically goes away. But, boy, I sought help and I actually committed to getting help like anybody with cancer or any other disease, they go to the hospital and that's OK."

"And you're allowed to do that and we should all be allowed to be who we are even though that happens to be the disease we fight," she added.

Zee also explained how while her career was booming, she felt that her personal life was falling apart.

"My career was always going up. I was so lucky and fortunate in times where I had made bad choices that my career was still on the upswing,” Zee said. “At home, my personal life was regularly falling apart, and from childhood on, I had a lot of chaos and I was addicted to chaos. I was addicted to self-harm and I had to seek help at the hospital."

Additionally, Zee hopes that her personal story will inspire, "bring hope" and help others know that they "are not alone."

Zee is currently pregnant with her second child with her husband, Ben Colonomos. The former Dancing With the Stars alum made the announcement during GMA in August. 

See the adorable way she told fans she was expecting in the video below.

RELATED CONTENT: