The actress talks about her attempts to change the state statute that allowed media outlets access and the retraumatization she experienced after some news sources published pictures of the scene of her mother’s death.

The actor Ashley Judd would be having a hard time getting over her mother’s death last year, even if she could do it in secrecy and seclusion.

The Grammy-winning country musician’s daughter told the Guardian in an interview on Friday that a few sensational, insensitive, and — according to experts — dangerous tabloid media reports containing graphic details about Naomi Judd’s death forced her to “double down” on the trauma counseling work she had already been doing while grieving.

Ashley Judd described how she had participated in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), a physically and mentally demanding form of psychotherapy that involves patients moving their eyes in a specific way. At the same time, they processed traumatic memories for three months last fall in outpatient sessions.

The therapy may take weeks if not longer, to heal the mental anguish from just one such memory. And when media sources revealed images of the scene of her mother’s death and the text of a small Post-It note her mother had written earlier in January, the actor best known for her performances in Double Jeopardy and Kiss the Girls was finished with that round of sessions.

Judd, who had unsuccessfully fought in court in Tennessee, the state of her mother’s birth, to keep those scandalous particulars private, later stated that she needed to return to EMDR.

“I enrolled again… just to be sure my healing was solid, concretized, and would endure,” Judd stated.

Judd’s admission that she has to restart EMDR not only exemplifies the re-traumatizing impact that an editorial choice like the outlets’ decision to disseminate the note and death scene photos may have.

Additionally, it provides the audience insight into Judd’s struggles as she and her family work to change the state statute that allowed media outlets access to the material to shield others from the same ordeal.

Regarding the legislative movement she’s helped organize, Judd said, “The dark past, in God’s hands, becomes our greatest asset.” “With it, we can spare others from suffering and death.”

Naomi Judd, who had a long history of anxiety, despair, and bipolar disease, committed suicide on April 30 at her home in the early morning hours. After a tenure in which their pair, the Judds, amassed 14 No. 1 hits, five Grammy victories, and more than 11 million record sales, she and her daughter Wynonna were set to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, the following day.

Without being aware that photos, videos from officers’ body cameras, and other evidence gathered by police could be retrieved through public records requests, Ashley Judd located her mother on the day she passed away and asked for assistance. Media organizations demanded such information, claiming a Tennessee state law that they said treated it as a public record.

“The highest values of decency, professionalism, respect, and humanism should be upheld in every workplace.”

Invoking their right to privacy, Naomi Judd’s heirs brought legal action, claiming that a statute should have prevented the publication of the information. The family eventually withdrew the lawsuit, partly because media outlets refused their requests for pictures of Naomi Judd’s body following preliminary hearings before the state supreme court ordered the case back for a full hearing.

Other materials, however, were still freely available. Additionally, a Post-it note requesting that Wynonna not be permitted to attend the burial was also published by Radar Online alongside images of a sizable bloodstain found at the location. Other media, such as the Sun and New York Post newspapers controlled by Rupert Murdoch, covered one or both photographs.

According to Dr. Christine Moutier, the chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, those articles flagrantly disregarded guidelines for safely and properly reporting on such a death.

According to the foundation’s recommendations for how media outlets should cover suicides, they should refrain from using gruesome imagery, withhold location information, and not reveal any notes that may have been left behind.

One reason is that suicide notes may not accurately reflect what the writers “would be thinking or saying when they are in their baseline or more well state of physiological, cognitive health,” according to Moutier.

The cautions against making the contents of such notes and graphic depictions of suicide scenes public are based on research, according to Moutier, which demonstrates that doing so can push people who are at risk of dying in such way closer to doing so.

It was also “profoundly disempowering and retraumatizing” for people mourning a loved one who died by suicide to be reminded of their loss so blatantly and publicly, according to a psychological trauma professional who has worked with Ashley Judd after the death of her mother.

According to Harvard Medical School psychologist Jim Hopper, for these sensationalistic media outlets to simply profit — you know, generate clicks and sell ads based on [this] family’s misery, and the photographs, the note, and things like that — is… horrible journalism.

According to Hopper, Ashley Judd and her family have chosen to be what the field of psychology refers to as “wounded healers” as they strive to overcome the pain connected to her mother’s passing and some of the negative media coverage surrounding it.

To prevent others from experiencing the same treatment that her family did, Ashley Judd has urged all media sources to become familiar with and accept the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s guidelines on appropriately covering notable suicides.

I have a history of channeling intense suffering—a devastating calamity—for a specific cause.

The highest values of decency, professionalism, respect, and humanity should be upheld in every workplace, according to Judd. When we know better, we act better, and it is evident that the publications that chose to publish in such a flagrantly immoral manner were catering to the crudest form of salacious commercialization.

She turned down the chance to speak out against the editors who ultimately decided to publish the images of the note and the bloodstain. I do feel that I can’t injure another person without hurting myself, she added. Therefore, if that is the case, I think they are also spiritually harming themselves in some way.

In the meantime, Larry Strickland, a former Elvis Presley backing vocalist, and Naomi Judd’s daughters have been fighting for a change in Tennessee law that would keep numerous records about deaths under non-criminal circumstances hidden.

Michael Shipman, the family’s lawyer, said he was partly drawn to the case because his father committed suicide. He added that many people in Tennessee who have experienced the loss of a loved one don’t even realize how much can become public and how painful it could be for them if that happens.

According to Shipman, Jack Johnson, the Republican majority leader of the Tennessee state senate, has submitted a bill for the 2023 legislative session that would place restrictions on the information that can be released in non-criminal deaths. These protections are somewhat akin to those in California and Florida, two states known for having a reputation for being open-records-friendly.

Ashley Judd also wished that recollections of her mother’s passing would one day give way to a renewed emphasis on how she lived. The star claimed that when she hosted a celebration for her mother’s 77th birthday on January 11, she was reminded of that.

One of the visitors was a woman who, as a teenager, worked as a nurse for three weeks at the hospital where Naomi Judd first began her successful music career.

That guest entertained Ashley Judd with tales of her mother’s “compassion, empathy and her sense of humor” and how a man who was spending a lot of time in the hospital fell in love with the nurse and woman who was born Diana Ellen Judd as guests ate cake, fried chicken, and biscuits.

Ashley Judd remarked, “I had never heard tales from the viewpoint of a mother’s patient. And it was stunning.

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