Hayden Panettiere opened up about her battle with postpartum depression at the Critics Choice Awards on January 17th 2016 in a really honest and beautiful way. Postpartum depression is still very much a stigma among women, especially young mothers and women of circumstance.
Postpartum depression touches the lives of more women a year than most people realize. According to The CDC “11 to 20% of women who give birth each year have postpartum depression symptoms. If you settled on an average of 15% of four million live births in the US annually, this would mean approximately 600,000 women get PPD each year in the United States alone.”
These numbers only account for live births, this does not include women who miscarry or birth stillborn children. These situations make postpartum depression even harder on the woman and if accounted for would certainly raise the number. Another staggering fact about postpartum depression that is out of the women each year who get postpartum depression, only 15% of them receive professional help. This is usually because of the way women feel that they have to be strong for their new addition and the way women with depression after childbirth are judged or because doctors don’t offer proper screening for the disease. Both of these are outside factors that could, and should be changed.
Hayden said this about her struggle:
It’s a long process and it’s really interesting because part of therapy for me was really finding my true self and the ability to say no. It’s so difficult, so difficult. On one hand they’re telling you, you’re teaching yourself to really just expose yourself and be real and be honest and be open and let those emotions flood through, and then on the other hand you’re having to like keep it bottled up. So and you’re bound to make mistakes and you’re bound, you have to find that balance, and I’m still trying to find that balance.”
She added:
“It’s wild what the mind does. It kind of like puts up a block and you can’t associate, and I was having a lot of trouble associating,” she explained. “So the more on-the-head it was, the more hitting the nail on the head, it was, the closer to me it was and the closer to the truth I, the more my – I just couldn’t. I was suppressing, I backed away, I had to think of something else.It’s crazy the blocks that your mind puts up just to protect you.”
In a world where celebrities are idolized and seen as heroes to many young people it is incredible that Hayden picked such a public event to share her story with. She is a work in progress and she’s doing it for her child and there’s nothing more beautiful than that.
Thank you Hayden for speaking out for anyone who has suffered or may suffer from postpartum depression in their own lives.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB1X3_Jk2WQ
Here’s a clip of her interview where she talks about the stigma around postpartum depression and how afraid she was in her own life to admit it. Tweet us at @CelebMix and let us know what you think of her strength.