An ABC reporter has had to pause in the middle of a broadcast after experiencing a panic attack live on-air. News Breakfast weather presenter Nate Byrne was in the middle of going over Queensland’s weather on Tuesday morning when he very calmly asked to hand back 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.” Millar was more than happy to take over and highlighted a piece written by Byrne in 2022 about his experience of on-air panic attacks.
In the piece, Byrne described how his first panic attack happened on live TV, a “terrifying experience” that changed his perspective on mental health. “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’.
” Byrne was later welcomed back to the show and apologised for stepping out. “Sorry if I gave anybody a bit of a scare,” he said. “You’ve been very honest before about getting panic attacks.