'I Was Dying of Depression'

THE REALITY STAR OPENS UP ABOUT HER HUGH HEFNER PAST, MANAGING DEBILITATING DEPRESSION AND THE NEW LIFE SHE'S BUILDING FOR HER TWO KIDS 

- DANIELLE BACHER

While in the midst of a panic attack in early September, Kendra Wilkinson felt like she was going to die. “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,” she recalls of the terrifying episode, during which she was rushed to a Los Angeles-area hospital with the help of her ex-husband, former NFL player Hank Baskett. “I had hit rock bottom, and I was dying of depression.”

Four months after her hospitalization, the reality star distinctly remembers her feelings of despair. “I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore,” says Wilkinson, 38, growing emotional in a family friend’s Newport Beach, Calif., home during her first interview since the mental health crisis. While it’s been 20 years since she first rose to fame at age 18 as one of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends on the reality series The