1-on-1 with Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo following mental health crisis

HOUSTON - FOX 26’s Melissa Wilson sits down for a one-on-one interview with Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo to find out how she’s doing after taking a break from the office to undergo treatment for clinical depression and anxiety.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is back in Houston, following inpatient therapy for mental health, and says she's feeling much better. In fact, she says she appreciated this week's Commissioner's Court more than she remembers in a long time! 

"I'm feeling great and living all of my usual experiences in a different light. It's both wonderful and this feeling of regret that did I not figure this out sooner! I could have been enjoying my life so much more, but I'm just glad that I'm here. I hope that by sharing my story, other people can catch it sooner than I did and just live their best lives sooner," states Hidalgo. 

Judge Hidalgo says she tried traditional talk therapy, as well as working with a psychiatrist, but that, nor anxiety medications, helped her as much as she had hoped. "I remember when I first took the medication, I felt so ashamed. I felt like I had lost some sort of competition like I was so weak, and the medication didn't help a whole lot. So, I'd spent the past year with everything I could muster to make myself feel better. Not just that, but exercising, meditating, everything that they recommend, and I was feeling worse and worse and worse. Even after winning the election, I thought, hey, maybe it's the pressure of the job, but we had a wonderful first six months of this year, objectively speaking, but I still just felt terrible. So, I started feeling even more suicidal than usual and I was convinced that if I didn't do something drastic, that it was pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn't make it," says Hidalgo. 

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She goes on to explain that she did everything in her power to make sure she was never alone because she just didn't trust herself, since she was feeling so miserable. "I like to shoot on the gun range sometimes and so at some point, I thought, I ought to have one, but I told my boyfriend, thank God, we didn't buy one, because I would have killed myself that way. I would never let him leave me alone, even when I traveled during the campaign," says Hidalgo. She goes on to openly share that she was also concerned she would jump off a hotel balcony and refused to be in a hotel alone, so that she wouldn't do that.

She admits that it's easy to mask depression with a smile but wants everyone to realize it's a disease as real and serious as cancer. She hopes everyone who has spoken out and questioned her illness and her capability to perform her job duties, will reconsider. "I think any naysayers I would ask that they stop and think about the people in their lives, about themselves, and I'm quite sure they know somebody who's struggling with a mental illness, and the statistics bear that out. According to national data, 50% of Americans are going to be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lives," says Hidalgo. 

Hidalgo explains that she visited her primary care physician in July for an unrelated condition when he realized how serious her situation was and referred her to an out-of-state treatment facility. "He told me I needed to go to an inpatient facility. There are many in Houston, but said he wasn't sending me to a facility in Houston because I wouldn't be a normal patient, folks will recognize me, and so he made calls, found that there was an opening at a facility in Cincinnati, Ohio, and within two days, I was on a plane there. I'm convinced that he and that primary care physician saved my life," exclaims Hidalgo. She's thankful her boyfriend helped pay for that expensive treatment. 

She wants to make sure that everyone realizes somehow, you can get help! "I saw absolutely no way out, and so that's why I want folks to take away and the reason why I'm sharing this. If you feel something wrong, if you're really down all the time, that's not lack of willpower. That doesn't mean you need to read more inspirational quotes or go to church more or exercise more or sleep more. It's a disease and just like diabetes, just like a broken leg, like cancer at some point, you need treatment. And if the first doctor you see isn't a good fit, like it wasn't for me, you need to go find a different one," encourages Hidalgo.

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Moving forward, Judge Hidalgo wants a call to action for Houston. "For everyone, first educate yourself and your kids. What is depression? What is bipolar? What is anxiety? What is addiction? We can't recognize it in ourselves or in our loved ones if we don't know what it is, and then advocate for yourself. Just like our healthcare system in general. Unfortunately, it requires a lot of self-advocacy. From a policy standpoint, we've made big investments! We made a $23 million investment last year on training our professionals, on supporting victims of domestic violence, kids addicted to vaping, etc. We have other additional programs, so tens of millions of dollars, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the size of the need," says Hidalgo.

She goes on to say that this needs to be a local, state, and national effort. "I'm working with my team to see what more can we do as Harris County to recognize it. I can't solve all of it, which is what I've learned is I can't put all that pressure on myself. In order to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves. I promise you if you have a mental illness, eventually it will affect your physical health! Once you move past it and you have the tools to conquer it, you will feel so much stronger than ever and it's worth it! You don't need to live in that suffering. It doesn't have to be there, and so I just hope that people take this and spread the word because we really need to open that conversation," encourages Hidalgo. 

It's important to note, that you can call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline 24 hours a day, seven days a week for help. It's simply 988.

For more information on the crisis hotline, click here.

For more about Judge Lina Hidalgo, click here.