“KSL Today” morning news anchor Lori Prichard is pictured in the KSL-TV studios in Salt Lake City on Monday, Jan. 6, 2020. | Steve Griffin, Deseret News
Anchor says she hopes to help educate people about depression, mental health resources
SALT LAKE CITY — If she were rusty or nervous, it didn’t show.
After a near five-month absence following the death of her husband, Travis, who died by suicide this past summer, KSL-TV’s Lori Prichard sat down at the anchor desk early Monday and seamlessly reported the day’s headlines: hostilities with Iran; the Golden Globes; a protest over homeless shelter beds and a fatal residential fire in Ogden.
At the start of the 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. “KSL Today” newscasts, co-anchor Dan Spindle welcomed Prichard back. The last time she was on air was Aug. 16, the day her husband died.
“It’s good to be back. It really is,” she said.
Prichard said she initially planned to return in November, but “I realized I wasn’t ready, I just wasn’t, and it wasn’t going to work,” she said.
“I was given more time, thankfully, by the wonderful people who work at this company and so now I’m ready. Still, it’s hard. It’s not easy.”
News producer Frances Cooke said the morning crew on and off the air welcomed her return. “To be able to have our morning show family as a whole family again, it’s a great feeling,” she said.
Prichard, the consummate professional, got back to work with little fanfare. It wasn’t until the end of the second hour that the news team paused to reflect on her loss, her return and to shed a few tears.
“After everything that she has been through, it just shows such incredible strength and incredible commitment,” Cooke said.
During her absence, Prichard occasionally shared her journey on social media. The response was sometimes overwhelming as others shared their struggles and losses. There were also messages of hope, encouragement and people acknowledging her courage in sharing her story.
It taught her that there’s clearly a need to talk about depression and suicide, she said. At the same time, “I would love to not talk about this and to hide and live in my own little world.”
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Steve Griffin, Deseret News
But as she contemplated her chosen career, she thought about the many times she had asked other people to allow her into their worlds to tell their stories.
“I thought how disingenuous of me if I did not do the same thing, particularly when it comes to suicide and depression because it has to be talked about because my husband never talked about it. He thought it was just a sign of weakness, and he did not want to feel weak,” she said.
Leona Wood, KSL-TV news director, said while Monday marked Prichard’s return on air, she’s been working behind the scenes for a while.
“She certainly hasn’t been a stranger to this newsroom. But having her on air this morning was very fulfilling and I think healing for our team who has been alongside her as she works through this very difficult process,” she said.
Prichard’s journalistic passion for truth and understanding are unchanged, but it’s now layered with a greater passion and concern for the community and her family “that was enhanced by this very unfortunate set of circumstances,” Wood said.
Prichard’s husband Travis, 44, was a physical therapist and was working toward a doctorate degree. He poured himself into his work and took great pride in helping people heal.
What Prichard didn’t know was that her husband was struggling with depression, particularly the past two years she would later learn after she found and read his journals. He kept it to himself, even as she tried to talk to him about what he was feeling.
“He’d say things to me like, ‘I feel weak’ and ‘I don’t want to burden you.’ He hid a lot of that from me,” she said.
A week after his death, she went through his phone and noticed a call to a toll-free number. It was a national suicide hotline and he had talked for 14 minutes. The call was placed the day before he died.
“He came home from work that night and didn’t say a word to me,” she recalled.
“He didn’t say, ‘I’m struggling. I need your help. I’m having a really hard time.’ He didn’t say anything, nothing.”
To learn this in hindsight was “sad, so sad,” Prichard said.
“I’m in a position to help him. I would have gotten him help. I would have taken him to the hospital. I would have had him admitted. I play those scenarios in my head a lot. He loved his children so much. I can’t imagine what he could have been going through that he would actively leave them,” she said.
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Steve Griffin, Deseret News
Now, Prichard lives a life she hadn’t planned.
“I always thought that Travis and I would be married until we were old and our kids were older and had their own families and we had grandchildren. And now I look at myself, I am a single parent” to two children, Prichard told KSL-TV’s Keith McCord during a lengthy segment on her journey and her planned return that aired Sunday night.
She has dialed back her morning duties to devote more time to her family, now working from 5 a.m. to 7 a.m. On breaks during Monday’s broadcast, she was in text and telephone contact with her son to ensure he was aware of the carpool schedule.
As Prichard returns to work, she said she is filled with a renewed purpose to educate people about depression and to push back against the stigma that surrounds mental illness.
“People need to understand that this isn’t something to be ashamed of. If you have depression, you have to talk about it and then you particularly need to talk about it with people that you love because they love you, too,” Prichard said.
When she has reached out on social media or following the airing of Sunday evening’s story, Prichard said she has felt a bit like a groundhog popping out of its burrow and seeing its shadow.
“The response and the messages and the texts and just it’s like so much that I have to just go back in my hole and hide for a little while. Then everything comes down, calms down, and then a few days later I’ll come out, and so that’s the best way to explain it,” she said.
Prichard said she knows her limits, and other than her own life experience “I’m in no way certified or licensed to give anyone any sort of advice whatsoever other than you’ve got to live. Do whatever you can for the people that you love,” she said.
On the other hand, she knows that her message and her example can make a difference in people’s outlook and choices.
Prichard said she owes it to her husband to share their story “because if there’s just one person out there who is struggling and and can see something in my story and identify with that and think, ‘OK, I need to get help’ or give it one more day, that’s what this is all about,” she told McCord.
Her husband’s death has changed her as a person, she said.
People have been profoundly kind to her and her family.
Her KSL “family” has been a constant source of support and comfort. There have been other kindnesses by people she scarcely knows and even strangers, everything from neighbors who tidied up her yard this fall to someone — she doesn’t know who — who dropped off dozens of wrapped gifts in bins and sacks on her front porch before Christmas.
“I never had that outlook on life. Maybe I had the cynicism that a journalist has. And now I realize people are really good. And that’s kind of what’s gotten me through all of this.”
If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, call the suicide prevention hotline at 1-800-273-TALK.
Crisis Hotlines
- Utah County Crisis Line: 801-691-5433
- Salt Lake County/UNI Crisis Line: 801-587-3000
- Wasatch Mental Health Crisis Line: 801-373-7393
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
- Trevor Project Hotline for LGBTQ teens: 1-866-488-7386
Online resources
- NAMI Utah: namiut.org
- Utah Chapter-American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: afsputah.com
- Suicide Prevention Lifeline: www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org
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