Catelynn Lowell and Tyler Baltierra have been through so much in their lives.
Just way, way too much.
Catelynn has April for a mother, and we’ve seen April be mentally and verbally abusive to her on several occasions in the early seasons of Teen Mom.
Tyler has Butch for a father, and we know it wasn’t easy on him to watch his dad go in and out of jail for literally his entire life.
But because they had such intense issues with their own parents, they were able to make the remarkably responsible, admirable decision to place their daughter Carly for adoption when Catelynn became pregnant at 16.
Unfortunately, even though it was the right thing to do, it was still obviously incredibly painful for them, and it’s clear that they still struggle with their decision somewhat, even today.
When they had their second daughter, Nova, Catelynn developed some serious postpartum depression, so much that she had to check into a treatment center.
And then when she and Tyler decided to try for another baby, she ended up having a miscarriage, which was very hard for both of them.
It was a big trigger for Cate’s depression, and she actually began considering suicide because of it, and so back to rehab she went.
Meanwhile, Tyler struggled at home, dealing with his own grief while caring for Nova and running their household.
Like we’ve said, these two have been through a lot.
But Catelynn’s been home from rehab for a few weeks now, and it looks like she and Tyler are dedicating themselves to raising awareness and bringing attention to the kinds of mental health issues they’ve been dealing with.
They’ve been talking about it on the show, of course, and on social media, and now they’re taking the time to do interviews on the subject.
Earlier this week, they made an appearance on a podcast called Voices for Change 2.0, and they really shared a lot.
And here we were, thinking their story couldn’t get any more heartbreaking …
During the podcast, they both revealed the mental illnesses they’ve been diagnosed with, with Catelynn explaining that she’s dealing with a few different things.
“It’s panic disorder, PTSD — I like to call myself a trauma survivor — and it’s depression, but it’s co-occurring depression or something like that,” she said.
“It will go away and it will come back with the panic disorder.”
She also said that it “kind of surprised” her to be diagnosed with PTSD, but that “it makes a lot of sense too.”
Honestly, if you’ve watched those first few seasons of Teen Mom, a diagnosis of PTSD makes perfect sense.
From the way she was raised to that super painful adoption, it’s actually pretty surprising she didn’t get that diagnosis sooner.
As for Tyler, he revealed that he first felt depressed when he was just 11 years old.
A big issue for him was his father “going in and out of prison all the time,” but he said that “at 11, though, that’s when I attempted suicide and failed.”
If you blocked that horrible story out of your head, he’s been very open about his suicide attempt in the past — he tried to hang himself but it didn’t work, and he had to walk around school with rope burns around his neck.
“After that my mom started to take me to therapy,” he recounted. “I was on anti-depressants a bit.”
But in the past few months he’s been going back to therapy, and he said that people there told him that he could be bipolar.
“That was pretty shocking to figure out,” he admitted, “but also it made a lot of sense back to when I was younger … But that was a lot to obviously digest that day.”
During the podcast, Catelynn also discussed why she felt comfortable airing so much of what she’s been through in the past few months on Teen Mom OG.
“I talked a lot about it with my therapist when I was in treatment,” she said, “my whole thing about me being vulnerable and sharing it. I could have said no to the producers and the people who work on the show and they would have totally understood.”
“If I was like, ‘Listen, I’m going through a rough time and I’m not filming it and I don’t want it to be aired,"” she said that MTV would have respected her wishes.
“But my whole thing is, if I can save somebody’s life and show them that it’s OK to not be OK sometimes and there’s things that you can do to get help, that’s the only reason I did it,” she continued.
“I wanted to bring awareness to the mental health issues and show that it’s real.”
She said that “Some people think, ‘Oh, you’re depressed, get the hell out of bed,’ but no, that’s not how it works. I just wanted to shine a light on that.”
It seems like she’s doing a great job so far, and we couldn’t be prouder of them both for taking care of themselves so well!