If you or someone you know is suffering from PPD, you are not alone. The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 at 1-833-TLC-MAMA.

The world is still reeling from the loss of actress and singer Hayden Panettiere. The day after her sudden death, fans began to share a clip where the performer says she was fired from a Neutrogena contract in 2015 after discussing her experiences with postpartum depression (PPD). The company has now responded to all the backlash.

“For more than a decade, Hayden was a valued member of our Neutrogena community. We are proud to have partnered with her and understand that we made her feel unsupported during a very difficult time. This is not what Neutrogena stands for or who we want to be,” the company wrote on Instagram.  “Hayden’s courage in sharing her challenges helped inspire important conversations and awareness. We are making a significant investment to a long-standing community health partner to help give more women access to the support they need, including care for postpartum depression.” 

Plans for this partnership will be shared once they are in place. To explain the delay in the company’s response, the statement adds: “Out of respect for Hayden’s family and loved ones, we did not want to speak out so soon following her passing. Everyone at Neutrogena extends their deepest condolences to Hayden’s family and all who loved her.”

Panettiere’s Battle With PPD

In 2015, during an interview on Live with Kelly and Michael, it was pointed out that Panettiere’s Nashville character struggles with PPD. Panettiere acknowledged that she also suffered from PPD, having, at the time, recently given birth to her daughter. 

“It’s something I think that needs to be talked about and women need to know that they’re not alone,” she rightfully points out. Co-host and mother, Kelly Ripa, adds to her comments by saying how much stigma there is around the subject. 

“I guess well, 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 mind. ‘Oh, it’s hormones,’ and they kind of brush it off. And it’s not true; it’s something that’s completely uncontrollable, and it’s really painful, and it’s really scary,”

Panettiere shares. 

The conversation between her and Ripa is short, respectful, and echoes what new parents have been saying for decades. Panettiere spoke honestly about a subject that often goes ignored. Taking the first step in breaking the stigma by publicly addressing it. You can watch the full segment below:

Firing From Neutrogena

A few months ago, Panettiere was on a press tour for her new memoir, This Is Me: A Reckoning. During an interview on Jay Shetty‘s On Purpose podcast, she mentioned she believed she was fired by Neutrogena due to speaking about PPD. 

“Of all the things, that they would fire me over. This was the last thing that I thought they would ever fire me over,” she told Shetty in May. When Panettiere went to do that 2015 interview, she “had no intention of, or plan to talk about postpartum depression. It just came up, and I was just being honest. And never for a second did I think that anyone would care, that anyone would have a bad reaction to it. It was my truth.”

As you can see, she wasn’t the one to bring it up, nor did she force the conversation. Ripa brought up a point about her character, and the actress used it as a platform to advocate for people with PPD. Maybe helping a few parents feel less alone.

“So when I got that call that Neutrogena wanted to fire me over that, and my representative at the time said, ‘That’s illegal, you can’t do that.’ And even though, you know, she saved the day that year, I knew that that was gonna be it. That there was gonna be, I was not gonna be invited back the next year,” Panettiere goes on to explain.

Still Fired

Even though her contract was saved at the time, the young actress knew the writing was on the wall. Her contract was not renewed. There is no way to definitively prove that her speaking about PPD is why she got fired. The timing is more than a bit suspect, though. Even the community notes on Neutrogena’s response to the backlash discuss the timing of the attempted firing. 

However, Panettiere made it clear that, despite whatever did or didn’t happen, she did not regret her remarks. “I wouldn’t change it for the world. I wouldn’t take it back,” she told Shetty. “But as I said, of all the things that I had been caught doing, that being the thing that, that was where they drew the line, and it was immoral, was shocking to me. And it made me realize and understand exactly what people thought of women who experience postpartum depression and how misunderstood it is, how much stigma there is around it.”

Company Vs. Human

During the interview with Shetty, Panettiere also addresses morality clauses in contracts, like the one she has with Neutrogena. Most companies justify these clauses to allow for a contract to be quickly canceled if something egregious happens. Like if one of their spokespeople was caught doing something horribly illegal or unethical. The problem is these can sometimes be used to control young celebrities into having squeaky-clean images that no one, let alone a minor or someone in their early 20s, can maintain. Panettiere pointed out that the company caught her every time she so much as smoked a cigarette. 

We aren’t saying that is what happened here since we do not know the specifics of Panettiere’s contract or what she was told the reason for letting her go was. What we are saying is that these contracts shouldn’t be used to silence important discussions about real issues. Panettiere’s remarks were respectful and honest to her own experience. An experience that echoes many others, showing that wealth and fame do not exempt someone from just being human. The more we normalize talking about things like PPD, the more we erase the stigma that never should have been there to begin with.

PPD

Pregnancy is rarely easy. Bodies have to dramatically change to accommodate a new life developing inside it. This alters everything from your looks to your biochemistry. Plenty of new parents and their partners deal with postpartum depression for anywhere up to a year after a baby is born. It’s not a pleasant topic, but it shouldn’t be a shameful one either. Nothing good ever comes of shutting down people for being honest about a real mental health crisis, and PPD is a very real crisis. 

If you or someone you know is suffering from PPD, you are not alone. The National Maternal Mental Health Hotline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 at 1-833-TLC-MAMA.