Nate Byrne “Doing Okay” After On-Air Panic Attack
Image: Image: abcnews_au / Instagram
ABC reporter Nate Byrne, who is a proud gay man, had to pause in the middle of a live news broadcast this morning after experiencing a panic attack live on-air.
Byrne was in the middle of reading the weather report for Queensland, when he paused, and asked to hand back over to ABC News Breakfast co-presenters Lisa Millar and Michael Rowland.
“I’m actually going to need to stop for a second,” he said.
“Some of you may know that I occasionally get affected by some panic attacks, and actually that’s happening right now.
“Lisa, maybe I could hand back to you.”
The ABC posted footage of the moment to their social media, with a caption reading:
“News Breakfast’s own Nate Byrne experienced a panic attack earlier this morning while presenting the weather.
“He’s open about his panic attacks — he’s even written about them before — and he is doing okay. Here’s the moment it happened and the team’s response.”
You can see the moment here:
View this post on Instagram
Nate Byrne has been open about living with anxiety
Millar took back the air calmly, highlighting that Byrne is very open about living with anxiety and being someone who experiences panic attacks, and wrote a piece for the ABC in 2022 that speaks about it.
“Nate wrote a great piece on the ABC online website about this and I reckon we might re-up it, put it on our socials, so you can have a bit of a read because it’s fantastic that he has been so open and transparent about it,” Millar said.
“The response when he first wrote about it and spoke about it was that everyone said, ‘Oh thank god, Nate’s not perfect, we thought he was perfect, but actually he’s now sharing something’.”
Nate returned to the show later on, and apologised to his co-hosts.
“Sorry if I gave anybody a bit of a scare,” he said.
“You’ve been very honest before about getting panic attacks on air and it’s great for people to know that it can happen to anyone,”said Millar.
“Gave me a scare because I thought I’d have to finish doing the weather report,” joked Rowland.
Byrne also thanked his team, who supported him during the panic attack.
You can read Nate Byrne’s story about his experiences with mental health and experiencing panic attacks here.
