“If we can find good coping mechanisms, if we have people we trust that we can talk to, that helps us make better choices for ourselves. My husband didn’t have that in a lot of situations.”
In the wake of the suicides of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, Chester Bennington’s widow Talinda Bennington has continued speaking out about mental health and suicide prevention.
It has been nearly a year since Bennington died by suicide on July 20, 2017 at the age of 41. In a recent CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper, Talinda described realizing that there were warning signs before her husband died. “I am now more educated about those signs, but they were definitely there: the hopelessness, the change of behavior, isolation.”
Talinda was used to her husband being depressed, adding, “That was all part of our daily life. Sometimes, some signs were there more than others. Sometimes, they weren’t there at all.”
The rocker was in good spirits in the days leading up to his death. Talinda shared, “He was [at] his best. We were on a family vacation, and he decided to go back home to do a television commercial. This was not a time where we or any of our family suspected this to happen, which is terrifying… We thought everything was OK.”
Unlike her husband, Talinda did not suffer from depression. “Watching my husband go through it, I had no idea. I could not relate.”
Bennington was very open in interviews about his struggles with depression, addiction, and dealing with the trauma of being sexually abused when he was young.
In an interview that was released shortly after his death, he said, “My whole life, I’ve just felt a little off. I find myself getting into these patterns of behavior or thought—especially when I’m stuck up here [in my head]; I like to say that ‘this is like a bad neighborhood, and I should not go walking alone.”
“If we can find good coping mechanisms, if we have people we trust that we can talk to, that helps us make better choices for ourselves,” Talinda said. “And my husband didn’t have that in a lot of situations.”
His Linkin Park bandmate Mike Shinoda is also speaking out about mental health. Shinoda, who recently released a solo album titled Post Traumatic, told Billboard, “It was so weird being given a membership to this club that I never wanted to be a part of. One thing I’ve learned, in terms of mental health, we talk about it being like physical health. Mental health should be the same. Mental health is just health. The way we get to that point is to check in with ourselves.”
If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide, call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) in the United States. To find a suicide helpline outside the U.S., visit IASP or Suicide.org.
