Teen Mom star Amber Portwood recently revealed that she wanted to hang herself during her battle with postpartum depression.
Portwood gave birth to her second child — James — in May, and revealed in the Dec. 17 episode of Teen Mom OG that she had suicidal thoughts in the aftermath.
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“There was a night that I was waiting for [Andrew, her boyfriend] and James to go to bed so I could kill myself. And for some odd reason he could feel it and he was like, ‘I’m not going to bed,’” Portwood recalled. “It does not feel good to go and do things. It does not feel good to be alive right now.”
In the same episode, Portwood’s Teen Mom OG co-star Catelynn Lowell — who also suffered postpartum depression — was shown visiting her cast mate to talk about their struggles.
“I literally feel like I’m at my lowest right now, like, I have no will. I’m not living for myself at the moment,” Amber admitted. “If you really need severe help, there’s places that you can go, just know that, so that you don’t feel hopeless,” Lowell compassionately replied.
During the Teen Mom OG reunion special that aired on Christmas Eve, Portwood went into more detail about the time surrounding her battle with the mental illness, as reported by ET.
“It went from taking care of James so amazingly to one night I had to give him to Andrew. I couldn’t, I don’t know what happened,” she explained. “I didn’t feel like that with [my daughter] Leah. I started feeling this weird pressure like I was going to explode. I was like, what the f**k is this?”
Portwood then spoke candidly about the night she seriously considered and planned to take her own life, saying, “There was literally one night in California where I said to Andrew, ‘Just go to sleep, just go to sleep,’ and I was like, ‘Just take James with you.’ And I was going to hang myself.”
During the special, she also accused MTV of not taking her depression seriously, and only allowing her a small amount of time away from filming to seek treatment.
“How long did they give Catelynn off? F—ing answer that,” she aggressively asked the reunion moderator Dr. Drew. “To go to treatment? A month,” he responded.
“I get a week!” Portwood replied.
“Would you like to go to treatment?” Dr. Drew then asked. “I think that would be great.”
“No! I’m doing my stuff at home with a nanny, with a psychiatrist, but guess what, I get a week for post-partum depression. This is bulls—. There’s so much s— we couldn’t even get in one show,” Portwood stated.