Ashley Judd's Emotional Rehab

Actress tells Glamour she spent 47 days being treated for depression and emotional problems

By Gina Serpe Jul 05, 2006 6:30 PMTags

It's a banner day for magazine tell-alls.

Fresh off Hilary Swank's divorce confessional to Vanity Fair, Ashley Judd has bared her A-list soul to Glamour, telling the women's mag that she underwent a 47-day stint in a Texas treatment center in February to overcome a host of emotional problems.

"I needed help," she says in the magazine's August issue and excerpted by USA Today. "I was in so much pain."

Judd says she completed nearly two months of treatment to come to terms with her history of depression, isolation and codependent relationships.

"Supposedly, my sister was the 'messed-up' one, and I was the 'perfect' one," she said.

It was during a family visit to sister Wynonna, who was then battling a food addiction at a Texas treatment facility, that Ashley Judd realized she had problems of her own to work out.

The De-Lovely star said she was approached by counselors at the Shades of Hope Treatment Center in Buffalo Gap, Texas, who encouraged her to seek help after various emotional problems began to surface during family sessions.

"They said, 'No one ever does an intervention on people like you. You look too good. You're too smart and together. But you [and Wynonna] come from the same family, so you come from the same wound.' No one had validated my pain before," the youngest Judd said.

Judd told Glamour that she honed her cheery and well-maintained exterior during her "chaotic" and "dysfunctional" childhood, using the façade of perfection to protect herself from the chaos.

The 38-year-old continues, saying that she became a "hyper-vigilant" child to compensate for the years of moving around: She attended 13 schools in 12 years and logged time under the guardianship of mother Naomi Judd, father Michael Ciminella (her parents had split when Judd was four) and her grandparents.

Ashley Judd also revealed in the interview that she had frequently used sleep to deal--or rather, not deal--with depression, and fought compulsive tendencies throughout her adult life, detailing her habitual behavior of cleaning, needing to constantly wipe down plastic surfaces on planes and in hotel rooms.

"Now I try to remind myself that if I engage in perfectionism, I am abusing myself," she said.

While Judd has no qualms about speaking out on her decision to get emotional help, she says one thing she never battled was an eating disorder.

Judd says that while she was never treated for nor diagnosed with such, she did take time out to investigate her relationship with food, saying, "I did take a look at my eating. Why wouldn't I? I looked at everything else in my life under a microscope."

And, according to the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood star, her life is the better for it.

She credits the experience with improving all the relationships in her life, including her four-and-a-half year marriage to race-car driver Dario Franchitti.

"I was unhappy, now I'm happy," she said. "Now, even when I'm having a rough day, it's better than my best day before treatment."