Kendra Wilkinson says she was ‘dying of depression’ battling Playboy demons

Former reality star Kendra Wilkinson has said she “hit rock bottom” and was “dying of depression” when she was admitted to hospital after suffering a panic attack last year.

The TV personality found fame at the age of 18 as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends in the reality series The Girls Next Door, about life in the Playboy Mansion.

The 38-year-old said it is difficult to look back on that time in her life, adding: “Playboy really messed my whole life up.”

She told People magazine: “It’s not easy to look back at my 20s. I’ve had to face my demons.”

She added: “I was on drugs at age 15 and I had a lot of issues.

“I really got into deep regret (afterwards) … deep. I struggled with depression before and at the mansion. I drank a lot. I was there for the partying, OK, let’s just be real. I was not there for Hugh Hefner to be my boyfriend.”

In hospital last year she was placed on the antipsychotic medication Abilify and later began outpatient therapy three times a week.

Discussing how she felt when she went to hospital, she told the magazine: “I was in a state of panic. I didn’t know what was going on in my head and my body or why I was crying. I had hit rock bottom.”

She added: “I was dying of depression. I was hitting the end of my life, and I went into psychosis. I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore.

“It was the lowest place I’ve ever been in my life. I felt like I had no future. I couldn’t see in front of my depression.

“I was giving up and I couldn’t find the light. I had no hope.”

Former I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Wilkinson, who has a 14-year-old son, Hank IV, and daughter, Alijah Mary, nine, with ex-husband and NFL star Hank Baskett, added: “It was so scary for me to go through it. 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 spiralling out of control and I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to survive.”

Wilkinson and Baskett announced their split in 2018 after almost 10 years of marriage but it was her ex-husband she turned to when she hit rock bottom.

She said: “There was a moment where I looked at my ex-husband and I said ‘Take me to the hospital’.

“To accept help that day and for Hank to drive me to the hospital was a huge day in both of our lives. It was a big day for my family and kids.

“I didn’t realise 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’.

“I would never go out of my way to kill myself, but I was just like ‘God, take me. God, take me’.

“To accept medication was the hardest thing to do. It meant I had to accept that I have some mental illness, and I didn’t want to have to do that.”

Wilkinson said she wants to make sure her daughter does not go through what she went through as a teenager.

She said: “I see loopholes in my life where I’m trying to correct now so my daughter doesn’t have to experience what I did at a young age.

“I don’t want my daughter sexualised like I was. As a mom I look back at what happened to where I felt like I had to date an older man at the age of 18. What brought me to that point?

“These are the things I’m trying to correct in my parenting for my daughter. What can I do to show her that she is more than that?

“And that’s what I am doing now in real estate. And that’s truly the gift I’m trying to give back to my children.”