“Nashville” actress Hayden Panettiere has checked into a treatment facility to address her struggle with postpartum depression, a representative has confirmed to CNN.
Panettiere, whose TV character Juliette also suffers from the condition, talked candidly to hosts Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan on “Live with Kelly and Michael” just last month about PPD, saying she could “very much relate” to her character’s issues.
“There’s a lot of misunderstanding and I feel like there’s a lot of people out there who think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds and,oh, it’s hormones,” Panettiere said. “It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.”
The actress gave birth to daughter Kaya in December 2014 with her partner, boxer Wladimir Klitschko. A representative said she entered a treatment facility voluntarily.
CNN’s Kelly Wallace reported in 2014 that PPD is far from rare among new moms.
As many as one in seven women in the United States, or nearly 15% of new moms, is believed to suffer from some form of mental illness during or after pregnancy, according to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (PDF).
The spectrum of illnesses goes beyond depression. Moms could be suffering from a range of mood and anxiety disorders; in the most rare and serious cases, affecting only 0.2% of all moms, they suffer from psychosis, the disorder that often garners the painful national headlines.
“When they tell you about postpartum depression, you think about, ‘OK, I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure my child, I want to hurt my child,'” Panetierre told Ripa and Strahan. “I’ve never ever had those feelings, and some women do. But you don’t realize what broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. And it’s something I think that needs to be talked about and women need to know that they’re not alone and that it does heal.”