Kerry Washington breaks silence on suicidal ideation due to eating disorder

Kerry Washington has recently broken her silence on suicidal ideation due to eating disorder.

In a new interview with Robin Roberts for a 20/20 special airing Sunday, Washington opened up about her eating disorder that made her think about suicide and wanted to “destroy” herself.

“I could feel how the abuse was a way to really hurt myself, as if I didn’t want to be here,” she told Roberts.

Washington continued, “It scared me that I could not want to be here because I was in so much pain.”

While reading an excerpt from her new memoir Thicker Than Water, which will be released on September 26, the Scandal star revealed that by the time she went to college her relationship with food and her body had “become a toxic cycle of self-abuse that utilised the tools of starvation, binge eating, body obsession and compulsive exercise”.

When questioned about suicide, Washington responded, “Yeah. Yeah ... The behaviour was tiny little acts of trying to destroy myself.”

The Little Fires Everywhere actress also confessed she prayed for her help with her eating disorder, explaining, “The first thing that put me on my knees like the first time I got on my knees and prayed to some power greater than myself to say like, ‘I can’t do this, I need some help’ — was with my eating disorder.”

“The body-dysmorphia, the body-hatred, it was beyond my control and really led me to feeling like, ‘I need help for somebody, or something, bigger than me because I’m in trouble and I don’t know how to live with this’,” pointed out the 46-year-old.

Washington, however, disclosed that it’s very different now.

“I wouldn’t say that I never act out with food, it’s just very different now. It’s not to the extreme. There’s no suicidal ideation, that is not where I am anymore,” she added.