Kendra Wilkinson, the ex-wife of former NFL player Hank Baskett and former reality television star, opened up about her mental health battle in a new interview with People.
It was the first time Wilkinson has spoken publicly about it since her hospitalization in September after suffering a panic attack.
“I was dying of depression,” Wilkinson said of the September incident in the emotional interview. “I was hitting the end of my life, and I went into psychosis. I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore.”
Since then, Wilkinson has been working on her mental health and has begun to face the damage that had occurred during her living in the Playboy Mansion.
Wilkinson became a household name when she was 18 years old and was one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on the E! reality show “Girls Next Door.”
The former reality star said she has had a hard time looking back at her life during her 20s and that she’s “had to face my demons.”
“Playboy really messed my whole life up,” said Wilkinson, who went back to the hospital a week after the Sept. 6 visit and was put on antipsychotic medication.
Wilkinson began outpatient therapy three times a week at UCLA and has started to face the unresolved issues from her time dating Hefner and her very public and painful divorce from Basket in 2019.
The 38-year-old described the dark place that she had been in leading up to her finally asking Baskett to take her to the hospital in order to get help.
Wilkinson said it was the “lowest place I’ve ever been in my life,” and she felt like she had “no future.”
“It was so scary for me to go through it,” said Wilkinson, who shares son Hank IV, 14, and daughter Alijah Mary, 9, with Baskett. “I wasn’t focusing on myself or my mental health. Here I was a single mom and I’ve been alone for years now. But it’s also easy to feel like the world is caving in on you. I was trying to fight it on my own. I was trying to cure it on my own and you can’t do that. I was isolating, hiding, blaming myself, blaming the world. I was spiraling out of control and I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to survive.”
The day Wilkinson asked Baskett, whom she divorced in 2018, for help, she called a “big day” for herself and her family.
“To accept help that day and for Hank to drive me to the hospital was a huge day in both of our lives,” she said. “It was a big day for my family and kids. I didn’t realize how bad I was suffering or what people were seeing of me until I got there. I had to really look in the mirror and be like, ‘I need help.’”
Wilkinson told People that she was in a better place, and on the day of the interview, it was “the first time in a long time that I felt like me again.”
But she also acknowledged that there will be challenges ahead as he continues to work on her mental health.
“Depression is something that doesn’t just go away,” she said. “It’s something that stays with you through life. You just have to learn to work with it and accept it. And it’s a part of me. What therapy did was that it built this tool system for me. So now I have the strength — I have the strength and the foundation I need to overcome my depression.”
Wilkinson and Baskett were married for 10 years before they divorced in 2018.
Baskett spent five seasons in the NFL, playing for the Eagles, Colts and Vikings.
He appeared in 67 NFL games, recording 77 catches for 1,098 yards and six touchdowns.
