7 Celebrities Who Have Opened Up About Postnatal Depression

'I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life.'

Postnatal depression affects between 10-15% of all new mothers in the UK, making women feel low and experience difficult bonding with their newborn baby.

Now these seven celebrities have opened up about their own experiences in the hope of helping others who are going through the same thing.

If you think you have symptoms, that go beyond the normal hormonal baby blues, the NHS says it is important to seek help as soon as possible.

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Adele

Adele, who has a four-year-old son Angelo, said in an interview with Vanity Fair: “I felt very inadequate. I felt like I’d made the worst decision of my life.”

“Four of my friends felt the same way I did, and everyone was too embarrassed to talk about it; they thought everyone would think they were a bad mum, and it’s not the case. It makes you a better mum if you give yourself a better time.”

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Gwyneth Paltrow

Paltrow now has two children with Coldplay singer Chris Martin, Apple, 12 and Moses, 10, but she explained how her son’s birth in 2006 was dogged by postnatal depression.

She said: “At my lowest, I was a robot. I just didn’t feel anything. I had no maternal feelings for him – it was awful. My problem was that I never acknowledged anything was wrong. I didn’t put two and two together.”

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Andrea McLean

McLean, who has two children, Amy and Finlay, used Loose Women to talk about her postnatal depression: “I felt that my family would be better off without me. I felt that my daughter would be better off without me. I was so ashamed of how I was feeling.”

“A lot of people see me and I’ve been in hair and makeup and I’m all professional and I do my job smiling, interacting, being interested and engaged but what I was doing was literally sobbing all the way home.”

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Luisa Zissman

Apprentice runner-up Zissman, has two daughters, Dixie and Indigo Esme, and she told OK! magazine: “While everyone else was bonding with their child, I wanted to walk out the door and never come back. I felt so ashamed. I felt so bad that I didn’t want to wake up in the mornings.

“I wanted to roll over and die. It’s such a deep low.”

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Hayden Panettiere

Panettiere has one daughter, Kaya, 2, and she told Yahoo that was frustrated by people who don’t take PND seriously, saying: “If you think for one second that a mother wants to feel that way toward her child, you are outta your mind. It is one of the most debilitating, scary, guilty feelings that you can ever feel.

“That a mother would not be able to connect with their child, would not be able to get a grip, or would not know what’s going on, for anybody to say that it’s false or created by us, you must have your head examined.”

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Drew Barrymore

Barrymore has two children, Olive, 4, and Frankie, 2, and told People! magazine: “I didn’t have postpartum the first time so I didn’t understand it because I was like, I feel great! The second time, I was like, Oh, I see what people talk about now. I understand. It’s a different type of overwhelming with the second. I really got under the cloud.”

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Stacey Solomon

Solomon has two sons, Zachary, 6, and Leighton, 2, and after the birth of her first son, when she was just 18-years-old, she suffered with PND, explaining: “I felt really trapped, like I’m going to be terrible, like I’m not going to be able to do this, I can’t live up to what the responsibility is.

“I just didn’t feel I had it in me as a person, which is crazy because I absolutely adore my children and I would do anything for them.”

If you need help, contact The PANDAS Foundation UK who support and advise any parent who is experiencing a perinatal mental illness.

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