In her new book, "Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One," Zee details her battle with depression and the survivor guilt that plagued her after Hurricane Katrina.
ABC News Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee is opening up about her long battle with depression in an emotional interview with network colleague Robin Roberts.
"10 days before I started my job at ABC News, I checked myself into a mental health hospital,” Zee, 36, revealed to Roberts.
In Zee's new memoir, Natural Disasters I Cover Them. I Am One, she says that at one point, she tried to take her own life.
“I will always have that disease," Zee said. "It’s not something that just magically goes away. But I sought help and I actually committed to getting help. Just like anybody with cancer, or any other disease — they go to the hospital and that’s okay. And you’re allowed to do that. We should all be allowed to be who we are, even though that happens to be the disease we fight.”
Zee added that covering Hurricane Katrina in 2005 changed her.
“I dove into that storm thinking, ‘I gotta see how high the water level is; I gotta see the science part of it.’ I get there — I see body bags for the first time. I saw real people with real struggles. And I walked away from that storm 10 days later with such real survivor's guilt and such empathy and humanity,” she said.
The meteorologist told Roberts that she wants to “bring hope” to others who are experiencing similar circumstances by telling her story and wants anyone suffering from depression to know “they are not alone."
Zee, who is pregnant with her second child, has been married to NBC personality Ben Aaron since 2014. The couple has one son, Adrian, born in 2015.
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