Kendra Wilkinson 'Was Dying of Depression' After Facing 'Demons' From Her Time at Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion

It's been roughly 15 years since Kendra Wilkinson moved out of Hugh Hefner's Playboy Mansion in 2009 — but it wasn't until recently when she truly faced the trauma of her overly-sexualized past.

In a new interview published Tuesday, January 16, the 38-year-old reflected on her crippling mental health battle for the first time since she found herself hospitalized in September 2023.

"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," Wilkinson revealed to a news publication of the moments leading up to her trip to the emergency room last year.

"I was dying of depression," admitted the mom-of-two — who shares Hank IV, 14, and Alijah Mary, 9, with her ex-husband Hank Baskett. "I was hitting the end of my life, and I went into psychosis. I felt like I wasn’t strong enough to live anymore."

One week after her sudden trip to the ER on September 6, 2023, Wilkinson went back to the hospital and was placed on the antipsychotic medication Abilify.

"It’s not easy to look back at my 20s. I’ve had to face my demons," the former reality star confessed. "Playboy really messed my whole life up."

After her back-to-back hospitalizations, Wilkinson started seeking outpatient therapy three times a week at UCLA in an effort to overcome her trauma, a majority of which evolved from the five years she spent living in Hefner's infamous mansion and her difficult divorce from Baskett, 41, in 2018.

"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," The Girls Next Door alum expressed, admitting she kept asking herself: "'How am I going to succeed?' 'What am I doing wrong in my life?' 'Do I give up?'"

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She shared: "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 spiraling out of control and I felt like I wasn't strong enough to survive."

That was until Wilkinson finally asked for help.

"There was a moment where I looked at my ex-husband and I said, 'Take me to the hospital,'" she recalled of the retired NFL athlete — whom she was married to for nearly 10 years after tying the knot in 2009.

"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 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,'" she continued.

Wilkinson noted: "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."

People interviewed Wilkinson.