‘Nashville’s’ Hayden Panettiere Voluntarily Enters Treatment for Postpartum Depression

Written by Lauren Jo Black
‘Nashville’s’ Hayden Panettiere Voluntarily Enters Treatment for Postpartum Depression

Hayden Panettiere

Nashville’s Hayden Panettiere recently opened up about her struggle with postpartum depression during her appearance on Live! with Kelly and Michael, and this week, the 26-year-old “is voluntarily seeking professional help at a treatment center,” her rep confirms to People.com.

Panettiere, who is mom to 10-month-old Kaya Evodokia, “asks that the media respect her privacy during this time.”

“I can very much relate,” the actress told Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan when discussing her character’s battle with PPD. (She plays the role of Juliette Barnes on ABC’s Nashville.)

“It’s something a lot of women experience. When [you’re told] about postpartum depression you think it’s ‘I feel negative feelings towards my child, I want to injure or hurt my child’ — I’ve never, ever had those feelings. Some women do. But you don’t realize how broad of a spectrum you can really experience that on. It’s something that needs to be talked about. Women need to know that they’re not alone, and that it does heal.”

She added, “There’s a lot of misunderstanding — there’s a lot of people out there that think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds, that ‘Oh, it’s hormones.’ They brush it off. It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable. It’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.”

Continued Panettiere, “Women are amazing. We do something that no man can do on this planet. I mean, we grow a human being in our body!”

She welcomed baby Kaya with her fiancé, professional boxer Wladimir Klitschko, last December.