Lisa Rinna Recalls Hallucinating ‘Killing People’ During Postpartum Depression Battle

Lisa Rinna opened up about the serious postpartum depression she faced after giving birth to her daughters, Delilah Belle and Amelia Gray.

“I had horrible postpartum depression, but I didn’t know it,” the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 61, said during the Friday, April 18, episode of her “Let’s Not Talk About the Husband” podcast. “I didn’t know what it was. When you have your first baby, you don’t know. You just don’t know.”

Rinna noted that she struggled with the mental health condition for 15 months after welcoming Delilah, now 26, in 1998. After she gave birth the second time and the depression returned, her husband, Harry Hamlin, became alarmed.

“You said, ‘I’m gonna kill you,’” Hamlin, 73, recalled of the period after Amelia, 23, was born in 2001. “And I said, ‘You better call [your OB-GYN] right now.’ You said, ‘You better watch out. I feel like killing you.’ You said, ‘Keep the knives in the drawer.’”

Rinna didn’t remember threatening to kill her spouse, but she did remember having violent “visions” at the time.

“I was having horrible hallucinations of killing people and I needed to take the knives out of the house. And I also had horrible visions of driving the car into a brick wall,” the former soap star explained. “I did not have horrible visions about hurting the baby in any way, shape or form. It wasn’t about that. It was about hopelessness, darkest depression and these horrible visions, hallucinations. And it was the knives and it was driving the car into a brick wall.”

Hamlin encouraged his wife to call her doctor, who prescribed antidepressants to treat the condition.

“It worked instantly, changed the whole thing,” Rinna said. “It changed the game instantly.”

Rinna went on to note that her first experience with postpartum depression didn’t involve the same “visions” she had after welcoming Amelia.

“[The first time] I was just hopeless. That’s the word,” she explained. “I was just absolutely hopeless. Like a huge dark cloud all over me. I don’t know how to describe it, because mine didn’t manifest itself toward the baby at all — it was toward me. I would say, looking back, I was completely psychotic.”

The former Bravo star concluded the discussion by noting the importance of speaking openly about postpartum depression, as so many people face it without support.

“Listen, I don’t think any woman should suffer or have to suffer going through postpartum depression,” she said. “And I know a lot do, and I know a lot do in silence.”

If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.