The former '90210' actress admits she was suicidal as she struggled with her mental health issues before she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder.

• Apr 24, 2021

AceShowbiz - Actress AnnaLynne McCord "wanted to die" for years before she was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID).

The "Nip/Tuck" star went public with her diagnosis earlier this week (begs19Apr21), and admits spending "so much" of her life battling her mental health issues made her suicidal.

She added, "I didn't want to be here. Now I wake up every day and say, 'Thank you, I'm alive again!' "

McCord, who was sexually abused as a child, feels relieved to be able to talk openly about her condition, because she takes issue with DID's previously used terminology, multiple personality disorder.

Speaking on breakfast show "Good Morning America", she said, "It is not that. You don't have multiple personalities; you have fragments of yourself. There's AnnaLynne, who you're talking to right now, right? Then there's this part of me that this trauma happened to that's still - if you can imagine it as trapped in Pandora's box. And I just opened Pandora's box."

The actress explained portraying a sexual assault survivor on the revamped "90210" was triggering for her, and helped her eventually recognise that something wasn't quite right.

"These moments were coming to light through my work. I didn't understand anything about the mind or the brain at the time, I just was trying to do my job and I couldn't," she recalled. "It was very scary."

McCord subsequently turned to medical professionals for help, and she's thankful she did.

"The brain doesn't care about quality of life, it just cares about going on to continue living," she said. "I want my quality of life to get better and that's why I stepped into this healing process. I want to thrive."