In December 2014, Hayden Panettiere nearly hemorrhaged to death after giving birth to her daughter Kaya. She recovered physically but struggled with what she described as “a total blackout of emotion.” She said she felt like her soul was dead.
At the time, she was playing an ambitious young country star in “Nashville.” When her character Juliette Barnes began experiencing postpartum depression on the show, Panettiere spoke out publicly, urging more awareness and discussion of a health condition that “a lot of women experience.”
"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,” she said on "Live! With Kelly and Michael"
at the time. “It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable and it’s really painful and it’s really scary and women need a lot of support.”
While many praised Panettiere’s openness, Neutrogena threatened to walk away, she said. She had worked for the skincare company for 10 years. When her contract was up, Neutrogena did not renew it.
“It was yet another blow in a year that had given almost nothing else,” Panettiere wrote in her 2026 memoir, “This Is Me: A Reckoning.”
Now her sudden death just shy of her 37th birthday is shedding new light on the hidden toll the physical and emotional changes of motherhood can have on women’s lives and careers.
What is postpartum depression?
Postpartum depression or distress is an umbrella term for the mood and anxiety disorders that can follow childbirth. Symptoms range from feelings of rage or shame to thoughts of suicide.
Maternal mental health disorders such as postpartum depression are the leading complication of childbirth. Researchers estimate that 1 in 5 new mothers in the U.S. suffers these disorders during pregnancy and up to a year after giving birth.
Those numbers are conservative because they only account for live births. Many women who experience a miscarriage or stillbirth also develop symptoms of depression. And other populations – such as women of color – suffer postpartum depression at higher rates.
A large majority of these women don’t get help. After nine months of intense medical attention, there’s too little after birth, researchers say.
And it’s getting worse. Between 2016 and 2023, mothers reported a nearly 65% increase of “fair to poor mental health,” according to the Policy Center for Maternal Mental Health.
What’s more, mental health disorders have become the leading cause of maternal death, contributing to nearly 1 in 4 pregnancy-related deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
‘I see you and I've been there, too’
For Panettiere, postpartum depression meant feeling "nothing" when looking at her newborn. She turned to alcohol and sometimes opiates to dull that "empty" feeling. It was the beginning of a mental health spiral.
Panettiere’s death deeply affected Michigan mom Krista Cicalo, who suffered from postpartum depression and anxiety after the births of her two sons.
“I had really bad anxiety. I always felt like something bad was going to happen. I worried constantly. I was depressed. I was angry or upset all the time. I hated myself,” she said. “And I didn't know what to do.”
Cicalo said she was among the first of her friends and co-workers to have kids and had nowhere to turn, so she bottled up her feelings, which only made her feel worse.
“I just had to learn how to pick up those pieces on my own,” she said.
Mothers in the grips of postpartum depression need support at home and at work, she said. She took to LinkedIn this week to spread the word.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about how many moms are quietly navigating this chapter of motherhood while trying to show up for their families, their jobs and everyone around them,” Cicalo wrote. “To the mom who is exhausted, overwhelmed, struggling or simply trying to figure it all out, I see you and I've been there, too.”
‘Scared to speak up’
Barbara Decker, a neurologist at Mary Washington Healthcare in Fredericksburg, Virginia, hears these stories all the time in her medical practice. She treats women with epilepsy who have postpartum depression.
Especially when recognized early, most women can fully recover. Left untreated, the consequences can be devastating, Decker told USA TODAY in an interview.
She knows that from personal experience. Decker nearly died giving birth to her second daughter. Then came the intrusive thoughts.
“I saw insects crawling in my food. My baby’s head was distorted. I couldn’t see people who were in the same room as me. And even on beautiful afternoon walks, I was seized by an overwhelming, unwanted compulsion to throw myself and my baby into oncoming traffic,” she wrote in an op-ed for USA TODAY in 2025. “I became detached from reality, terrified of what I might do to my baby and myself.”
At the time, she was her family’s primary breadwinner. Returning to work was fulfilling but stressful. She would pull into the driveway at night after a full day at the clinic and think to herself: “OK, now my real full-time job starts.”
As a medical professional who spent her career studying the human brain, she was afraid to ask for her help when hers betrayed her because of the social stigma around mental health.
“I'll be very frank. At the time, I was at a health care system where I was initially very scared to speak up,” Decker told USA TODAY. “Physicians are not immune to any of this.”
Decker says she was diagnosed with postpartum obsessive-compulsive disorder and psychosis and found help at The Motherhood Space in Jacksonville, Florida – a program that treats mood and anxiety disorders during and after pregnancy. But many mothers, she said, aren’t so lucky.
Working with postpartum depression
And that’s what postpartum advocates want all employers to understand. Postpartum depression does not end when maternity leave ends.
“Postpartum depression is common enough that we should not think of it as an unusual problem affecting only a small number of working mothers,” said Karen Kleiman, founder and director of the Postpartum Stress Center. “Many of these women are working or will be returning to work while they are still experiencing symptoms.”
While returning to work can be a balm that boosts self-esteem and social support, the transition can also be stressful. Balancing a new baby and the demands of a job on top of the debilitating effects of postpartum depression and anxiety can drive up absenteeism and undercut job performance.
“Being pregnant or having recently had a baby is its own source of stress that can make it difficult for any employee to thrive at work,” according to the Center for Workplace Mental Health. “The additional burden of experiencing depression during the perinatal period significantly increases the chances of an employee struggling in the workplace.”
How the workplace can help
Yet many workplaces have a limited understanding of mood and anxiety disorders during pregnancy and after birth and are ill-equipped to support workers suffering from them. In fact, unsupportive work environments not only intensify postpartum distress, they can put new mothers at higher risk for it, research shows.
Postpartum depression is a health condition, not a character flaw, a lack of commitment or evidence that a woman is no longer capable of doing her job, Kleiman said. Yet fear of stigma often stops women from seeking help. Even if workplace protections and accommodations exist on paper, that does not mean women feel safe using them, she said.
“We need to move beyond policies that technically exist and create cultures in which women can actually use them without fearing that they will be perceived as less capable or less dedicated to their work,” she said.
The solution? Make gradual flexible working conditions and other reasonable accommodations the norm “rather than something a woman has to fight for after she is already struggling,” Kleiman said.
“I would like this conversation to move beyond whether women should disclose postpartum depression and toward how we can create environments where they can safely disclose it,” she said.
'Not simply a new mom having a bad day'
Creating a supportive workplace is not just the right thing to do, said Jon Hyman, chair of the employment and labor practice at the Wickens Herzer Panza law firm.
“Postpartum depression is not simply a new mom having a bad day or something an employer should expect an employee to ‘push through.’ It is a serious, and often protected, medical condition, and employers need to treat it that way,” Hyman said.
Legally, postpartum depression sits at the intersection of several workplace protections, according to Hyman. The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act expressly covers postpartum depression as a condition related to pregnancy or childbirth that may require reasonable accommodations absent undue hardship, he said. The ADA may provide additional protection when the condition qualifies as a disability. Eligible employees may also have job-protected leave available under the Family Medical Leave Act.
“The best practice is straightforward: Listen, don’t judge, and engage. An employee doesn’t need to utter the magic words ‘reasonable accommodation,’" Hyman said. "If she tells a manager she’s struggling after childbirth and needs help – time for therapy appointments, a modified schedule, intermittent leave, remote work where feasible, or another adjustment – that should start a conversation towards an accommodation, not an interrogation or worse.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'I've been there too.' Panettiere death breaks postpartum silence
