Dolly Parton Opened Up on Her Private Battle With 'Suicidal' Depression Years Before Her Death at 80

Dolly Parton once confessed that she went through a "dark time" where she battled depression and suicidal thoughts, RadarOnline.com has learned.

According to the country legend, the period "lasted several months" as she struggled with the idea of never having children with her husband, Carl Thomas Dean, amid pressures from her career and health issues.

The depressive episode began in the mid-1980s, not long after Parton "started menopause" and underwent a "partial hysterectomy."

In a resurfaced interview, the Jolene singer admitted she'd once felt "guilty" about her success in music and worried if it had been "selfish" of her not to have children earlier in life instead.

"Then one day, I just said to myself, ‘Right, get off your fat b-tt, or if you really are suicidal, then go and shoot your brains out. But get your misery out of other people’s lives and shut up!'" she recalled.

Still, she sometimes pondered what she would have been like as a parent.

"I think I would have made a nice mama," the country artist said at the time.

Parton met her would-be husband in 1964. They got married two years later, and they were together for more than 50 years before his death.

Despite "trying for many years," they never had children.

"I put it on hold because my career was doing so well and I was on birth control pills," she explained. "Later, I came off them and still nothing happened."

But Parton put a positive spin on their private struggles.

"I don’t feel sad about it because when I started doing work for children’s charities, I thought maybe God didn’t want me to have kids so that everybody else’s kids could be mine," she shared.

During a December 2024 appearance on Bunnie Xo's Dumb Blonde podcast, Parton reflected on what made her marriage work for so many years.

"We never fought back and forth," she explained. "Anytime (there is) too much tension going on, either one of us can like, find a joke about it to really break the tension, where we don’t let it go so far."

Aside from their senses of humor, Parton also teased that she made an effort to "look as good as I can" to help "keep things spicy" between them over the decades.

In November 2023, she also pointed out that simply liking each other can go a long way in a marriage.

"There's the respect and the love, and I just like him!" she gushed on Zoe Ball's Radio 2 Breakfast Show. "You know, I would have liked him if he wasn't my husband, if he was somebody else's husband I say, 'You know that Carl Dean, ain't he funny? Ain't he a good guy?' So, I think it's just that mutual respect and we just like each other."

Dean died at 82 in March 2025.

The next year, Parton passed away at 80.