Paltrow battled the illness after the birth of son Moses, her second child, in 2006, while The Village actress Howard recently admitted she too had gone through a period of depression after she welcomed her first child, Theo, in 2007.
The pair is offering fans help with the devastating condition in Paltrow’s Goop newsletter, with the Oscar winner opening up about the “darkest and most painfully debilitating” time of her life.
She writes, “When my son, Moses, came into the world in 2006, I expected to have another period of euphoria following his birth, much the way I had when my daughter was born two years earlier. Instead I was confronted with one of the darkest and most painfully debilitating chapters of my life. For about five months I had, what I can see in hindsight as postnatal depression, and since that time, I have wanted to know more about it. Not only from a hormonal and scientific standpoint, and why so many of us experience it, but from the perspective of other women who have gone through it.”
Howard goes on to reveal how she “felt nothing” at her son’s arrival, and went through months of “shower breakdowns” where she would hide her emotional outbursts in the bathroom.
She later admits she found Brooke Shields’ book on her own struggle with post-natal depression a “revelation”.
Paltrow has also enlisted the help of two female doctors to offer readers a medical analysis of the condition.
