‘Overworked’ TV star’s skin started falling off her body during mental breakdown
Her best friend had been diagnosed with cancer at the time
Tamra Judge felt so overworked that she was referred to The Real Housewives of Orange County‘s on-set psychiatrist. It happened just after her best friend, Teddi Mellencamp, was diagnosed with cancer, and Tamra had to fill in a 500-word survey on how she felt.
Her personal and professional workloads had become “overwhelming” and prompted her to see the show’s psychiatrist and pause filming midseason during RHOC season 19. Alongside filming, she was filming five podcasts a week and was dealing with her friend’s diagnosis.
She told SiriusXM’s Jeff Lewis Live: “It was a lot. I was like literally having a mental breakdown. I wasn’t eating. I wasn’t sleeping by the end of the season. I ended up weighing 108 pounds. My skin was just literally falling off of me. And I was just so sad. I was sad.”
“When somebody close to you is diagnosed with what Teddi was diagnosed with, it’s, the unknown is horrible. I am committed to every job I have. If it’s a podcast, if it’s me working at Burger King when I’m 16 years old, I am committed. I’m a hard worker,” she added.
Tamra revealed how she’d been filming for two weeks when her friend, Teddi, who has stage four melanoma, was diagnosed. She said: “That just really put like, you know, nail through my heart and I was just so devastated and on top of everything else, it was difficult.”
She continued: “I got to a point where I was overworked, I was depressed. I took a week off of the show. You know, you guys all saw how that happened. I talked to my therapist when I got home. I also talked to the show psychiatrist. I had to do a 500 question survey.”
“Then she evaluated me and she’s like, “You’re severely depressed. You have self-worth problems,” Tamra added, explaining that the show’s psychiatrist is different to her own therapist, and had called her to check in and see how she was doing mentally.
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