Majella O’Donnell: Completely Herself

Topics covered: Childhood, family, fear and safety, motherhood, relationships, depression, psychiatric care, medication, ADHD, breast cancer, ​mental health​, identity​, vulnerability, recovery, love, marriage and life with Daniel.

My guest in this episode is mental health advocate and TV personality Majella O’Donnell, in what is her very first podcast conversation.

Majella is a mother of two and grandmother of four, and she has been married to singer Daniel O’Donnell for almost 24 years.

In this conversation, Majella speaks with extraordinary honesty about her life and, in particular, her experience of living with depression.

She reflects on her childhood and ​in particular her relationship with her father, describing an upbringing in which she lived with fear and, as she now understands it, in an almost constant state of fight or flight.

We talk about motherhood and the times she struggled, relationships, her cancer diagnosis, and the love, humour and independence at the heart of her marriage to Daniel.

At the centre of our conversation is the severe depression Majella experienced and the ten weeks she spent as an inpatient in St John of God Hospital​ in 2024.

She describes what it felt like when depression took away her ability to function and make even the simplest decisions and what led her to seek professional help.

Majella also speaks openly about medication and the process, under medical care, of changing treatment and eventually finding a combination that worked for her.

One of the striking things about her experience is that depression didn't only appear when life was difficult. She talks about becoming unwell at a time when she was happy, loved and grateful for the life she had​...a powerful reminder that mental illness doesn't always have an obvious explanation.

Today, Majella is in a much better place. She has a greater understanding of herself and what she needs to protect her mental health, and she is using her own experience to encourage more honest conversations about depression.

This is a deeply personal conversation about childhood, fear, love, illness, identity, getting help and finding your way back to yourself.