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‘Bridgerton’ Star Ruby Barker Hospitalized For Mental Health Concerns

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By Kristin Myers on May 28, 2022 at 8:30 AM PDT

Actress Ruby Barker is best known for her role as Marina Thompson on "Bridgerton." Although Marina had a major role in the first season of the Netflix period drama, she was only featured briefly in one episode of the second season.

Earlier this week, Ruby opened up to her followers on Instagram about the mental health struggles that she was currently experiencing, including a recent hospitalization.

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Ruby Barker Opens Up With Followers About Her Mental Health

In the caption, Ruby wrote, "Mental health week is every week for me. Off my chest. I feel like I’ve not been completely honest so this is for my followers. Time to be transparent. I’ve been struggling since Bridgerton, this is the truth. Thank you all for supporting me, your love holds me up. #mentalhealthawareness."

In the video, which was almost six minutes long, the 25-year-old actress asked her followers, "How are you? How are you, really, though? You know?"

"I am better," she said. "I've been really unwell for a really long time and I just want to be honest with everybody. I have been struggling." She revealed that she actually recorded the video from inside the hospital and that she was going to be discharged soon.

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Ruby told her followers that she will be taking "a little bit of a break for myself and I want to encourage others ... if you are struggling, please, do yourself a favor and take a break. Stop being so hard on yourself."

She told her fans that "people want to have these conversations but they don't even know how to have a conversation." She described her prior self as "rage-filled" and "angry," saying that she was "carrying the weight of the world on my back."

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'I am at the point where I have a diagnosis'

"I am at the point where I have a diagnosis," she said, although she said that she would disclose more about that at another time. "I can’t carry on the way that I've been carrying on," she said. "I need to change so that is what I am trying to do."

She said that there were "many" people that she needed to thank, including her friends, Netflix, and Shonda Rhimes, for "saving me and giving me an opportunity."

She said that she was holding in so much pressure, that she felt like her brain was going to go "boom." Ruby said she was harboring "so much energy, and so much frustration, and pain, from my past and where I come from."

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She said that she wants to have more conversations with her followers about mental health at a later date and thanked everyone who helped her have "a job ... have work, have a purpose."

"I do not my diagnosis to be a self-fulfilling prophecy," she said. "I want to survive and I will survive, I am going to, and so are you. That's the beauty of it. So are you."

Ruby then burst into song at the end of the video. It's unclear at this time if Ruby will appear in season 3 of "Bridgerton." Production on season 3 begins in London this summer.

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