John Legend helped wife with postnatal depression

By BBC

John Legend has revealed how he helped his wife, model Chrissy Teigen, through postnatal depression.

The 31-year-old said recently that she’d been battling the condition since the birth of her daughter Luna last year.

John Legend told People that he did whatever he could do “to help her”.

“(As a man) you don’t know internally what it feels like… You need to be present and you need to be compassionate,” he said.

“And we’re all learning and trying to figure it out as we go.”

In an open letter in US Glamour, Chrissy Teigen said that she couldn’t leave the house for long periods of time, that she shut herself away in the dark and barely moved from “the exact same spot” all day after becoming a mum last April.

“I have a great life. I have all the help I could need: John, my mother (who lives with us), a nanny,” she wrote.

“But postpartum does not discriminate. I couldn’t control it. And that’s part of the reason it took me so long to speak up: I felt selfish, icky, and weird saying aloud that I’m struggling.

“Sometimes I still do.”

John Legend, 38, praised his wife for being open about the condition, saying: “I think it was powerful for her to let a lot of women know they’re not alone, and no matter how much money you have or fame, anybody can feel that.

“It’s a difficult thing to be a new father and for my wife to be a new mother.

“[Parenting] advances the level of partnership you share. It’s exciting to see how we as a couple grow together and learn how to react to the challenges and the joys.”

Adele says she suffered from postnatal depression after the birth of her son, Angelo, in 2012 and Nashville star Hayden Panettiere was treated twice for the same condition after she gave birth to her daughter Kaya in 2014.