Hayden Panettiere opens up about postpartum depression

The fourth season of Nashville premiered last week, and Hayden Panettiere visited Live! with Kelly and Michael on Monday to talk about it. Her character on the series, Juliette, has suffered from postpartum depression, and Panettiere revealed to co-hosts Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan that it’s a struggle she understands.

“She went through that, which is something that I can very much relate to, and something that I know a lot of women experience,” said Panettiere, who gave birth to her daughter, Kaya, in 2014. “It’s something, I think, that needs to be talked about, and women need to know that they’re not alone.”

She told Ripa and Strahan that she thinks there is “a lot of misunderstanding” around postpartum; that people “think that it’s not real, that it’s not true, that it’s something that’s made up in their minds.”

“That’s not true,” Panettiere said. “It’s something that’s completely uncontrollable, and it’s really painful and it’s really scary, and women need a lot of support.”

“Women are amazing,” she added. “We do something that no man can do on this planet! I mean, we grow a human being in our bodies!”

Nashville airs Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m. on ABC.