Valerie Bertinelli's Most Candid Confessions About Her Mental Health

Valerie Bertinelli rose to fame in the 1970s as the star of the series "One Day at a Time" and was famously married to rock star Eddie Van Halen. Thirty years later, she entered the public eye yet again when she became a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight loss program. Soon, she established herself as a host on the Food Network and became an example of embracing a healthy lifestyle. But it took Bertinelli quite a while to recover from her personal demons. Even today, she is honest about her mental health and hopes to destigmatize the conversation around mental illness.

Bertinelli has increasingly used her platform to foster difficult conversations that often were not talked about publicly in the past. She often takes to social media to give an authentic look at her life, pulling the curtain back to show fans that the life of a celebrity is not always perfect. (She even detailed a nasty tumble that she took on a recent project, resulting in a gnarly arm injury!) But Bertinelli has made it clear that she wants to be fully transparent and talk about challenging topics, like mental health, in hopes of making other people feel less alone in their experiences.

In November 2024, Valerie Bertinelli opened up on social media about a scary ordeal she experienced. Detailing a bad anxiety attack, she revealed in an Instagram post, "A few hours ago, I was weeping uncontrollably, and my heart felt like it was pounding out of my chest. I couldn't stop shaking." Bertinelli uploaded a video of her unsteady hands trembling nonstop, an after effect of the attack. "I almost disassociate and am focused solely on calming down and finding any road to a more relaxed and peaceful body," she wrote. "Because I know it's just my brain overthinking and catastrophizing but my body goes into overdrive and I have no control over it." 

Bertinelli said that she was nervous to share her story on social media, but wanted to bring comfort to others who experience similar attacks. She concluded her post by saying, "Tell me I'm not the only one out here 😬 and is there anything that you have also found to be helpful? Anyway...this little bit of vulnerability is brought to you by someone who wants you to know you're not alone. Love you 🤍"

Throughout her life, Valerie Bertinelli has been honest about her experience with aging — a topic which is often taboo in Hollywood. Bertinelli spoke about her journey with menopause and how the change has impacted her life over the years. In a September 2024 appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show, Bertinelli joked about the subject, saying she is "menodead." While Bertinelli recalled going through menopause roughly eight years prior, she said her symptoms lasted over a decade. And, the symptoms affected her work on the sitcom "Hot In Cleveland." Bertinelli shared, "Trying to memorize lines, all of the best bloopers [are] because Valerie was going through brain fog."

And while "Hot in Cleveland" ended its run in 2015, Bertinelli said she is still dealing with the fallout from menopause, especially mentally. "I'm at a point now where I'm eight years out but I've also had probably the most challenging, difficult, heartbreaking eight years of my life ... Now I'm like, 'What is happening to my mental health?'" But she added how she finds comfort talking about this topic with other women and comparing experiences. "It's fun to talk to other women that are going through the same thing and we can relate."

While she is now proudly sober, Valerie Bertinelli has been honest about her dark past where she often experimented with drugs. She co-starred on "One Day At A Time" with actress Mackenzie Phillips who struggled with addiction for decades, and Bertinelli told Today in 2008 that she tried cocaine for the first time as a teen with Phillips. She confessed in her 2008 book "Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time" that drugs were a big part of her early relationship with her then-husband Eddie Van Halen. "The priest we tapped to perform the ceremony gave us questionnaires so he could get to know us better and offer more personal words," she remembered. "As we filled out the forms at home, we each held a little vial of coke."

In 2022, Bertinelli appeared on the Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast and reflected on how easy it was to have access to drugs during her stardom in the 1980s. "Cocaine was everywhere and easy to get," she recalled. In a 2010 interview with Good Housekeeping, Bertinelli remembered a time when she weighed only 98 pounds. "That was the cocaine diet," she admitted. "Then, everyone else was doing it. I was a follower. It's not something I'm proud of." But when she stopped using drugs, Bertinelli started to look to a new vice: food.

Valerie Bertinelli's weight was on display when she became a spokesperson for Jenny Craig weight loss in 2007. She wrote two autobiographies about her weight loss journey and struggle with food: "Losing It: And Gaining My Life Back One Pound at a Time" in 2008 and "Finding It: And Satisfying My Hunger for Life Without Opening the Fridge" in 2009. "It wasn't one particular food; I just had no Stop button," she explained to Good Housekeeping in 2010.

In a 2022 interview with New Beauty, Bertinelli shared that her weight is what holds her back the most from being kind to herself. "But I want to start feeling the same about myself — no matter what weight I am. I don't have to wait until I've lost weight to be kind to myself and to be kind to others. It shouldn't matter what I look like. I'm trying to make that a reality in my life, and then, hopefully, my body will follow." She admitted that she threw away her scale after writing her 2022 memoir "Enough Already" and has not weighed herself since. "I do know that my mental health has improved immensely because I stopped looking at the scale every morning," she shared, "and that's the first big step for me." And the scale is not the only thing she ditched for her peace of mind.

Valerie Bertinelli has been in the public eye since she was a teenager, dealing with judgement as a result of her fame for decades. Back in 2021, Bertinelli addressed her online bullies on Instagram, saying, "We all could use a little more kindness and patience and grace, because we just never know what someone else is going through." In a now-deleted Instagram post from May 2024, Bertinelli told her followers that she would be taking a necessary break from social media. 

She explained in her post (via EW), "The last six or so weeks have been...a LOT. And while I am incredibly grateful for all your support for my book and everyone I've had the good fortune to meet, this here introvert in extrovert's clothing is in need of a mental health break." It appears that Bertinelli was in need of some well-deserved quiet time away from cameras and the media. Her "introvert in extrovert's clothing" comment illustrates how her big smiles and outgoing public personality are a response to having a career on camera, but may not naturally come easy to the actress.

Even though Bertinelli needed a break, she assured fans that she was well. "Taking a little social media cleanse/detox and a mental health break is a good thing and I'm grateful I'm at a place in my life where I'm aware enough to know when I'm overwhelmed and mentally/emotionally exhausted." She encouraged her followers to "take care of yourselves" before signing off, "I'll be back before you know it." Bertinelli would return to Instagram in June 2024.