Hayden Panettiere thought speaking out about her mental health would be “easier” than it’s turned out to be. The actress, 35, appeared on “Today with Hoda and Jenna” Tuesday to promote her new movie “Amber Alert,” and talked with hosts Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager about how difficult it has been to share her mental health struggles in the wake of her brother Jaden’s death . “I thought it would be easier,” the “Heroes” star said when asked by Bush Hager how it’s “felt” to get “a hold of” her mental health “and then having a public conversation about it.
” “I thought that people would have empathy – [that it] was going to be the only thing that was there, but I had no idea how my body, my mind, was going to react to grief,” Panettiere added. “It’s wild what stress and grief and all these hormones and running through your body can do..
. I mean, make you faint. My mother, when she got stressed – she’s gonna kill me for saying this – she used to get knots on her head.
” She continued, “It comes in all different forms, so nobody should be embarrassed by it or judged for it.” Speaking about the death of her brother, who passed away suddenly in 2023 at just 28 from an undiagnosed heart condition , Panettiere said she doesn’t think she’s been able to process the loss. “I don’t know that I fully have [processed it],” she confessed.
“I think it’s something that transforms over time. Maybe the five stages of grief .