Amber Portwood is opening up about the progress she’s made in her mental health journey, telling fans this week that she’s “doing a million times better.”
The former ‘Teen Mom’ star returned to social media last week by announcing her newly launched YouTube channel, where she plans to drop a new video every week. The first video featured a life update from Amer, who was coming off a months-long social media hiatus. Before going MIA on the Internet, Amber had been hitting TikTok Live almost nightly, with those Lives often featuring Amber yelling at— or about– someone in her life.
This week, Amber opened up about her ongoing mental health journey, which she claims has greatly improved over the years.
At the beginning of her video, Amber admitted to fans that it was difficult for her to accept the fact that she had any mental illnesses– so much, in fact, that she initially “didn’t take the medication” prescribed to her and turned to self-medicating instead. Although her decision to self-medicate eventually caused her to get “into trouble,” Amber said it wasn’t until she saw some of her behavior on TV that she realized how much she needed to follow her doctor’s orders.
“ … I started watching myself on TV around this time and, you know, even though I wouldn’t take anything back, I look at it and I’m like, ‘Oh my God,’” she said. “Like, that’s not me … I started taking my medication afterwards, just simply because I was watching myself and I wanted to help myself and there was a lot of people around me at the time that wanted to help me.”
(As fans of ‘Teen Mom’ know, Amber has been diagnosed with multiple mental illnesses, including Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar 2 Disorder. While she doesn’t specify the timeline of some of the events discussed in her latest video, the first comments are seemingly referring to the early years of ‘Teen Mom’– before she went to jail in 2012.)
While Amber admitted that her medication “was working for a little bit,” she stopped taking it at some point, calling the move, “one of the worst decisions” she’s ever made.
“I had this insane crash of emotions and ups and downs and impulsiveness and just crazy things that I was doing,” she recalled. “I mean, I can’t tell you guys all the stories. It was really crazy. It took the hard lesson of going, probably to prison, to understand there was something wrong [and] that I needed to keep on watching this the best that I could because this was actually not something small … .”
As the video continued, Amber revealed that she was prescribed a dozen different medications at one point, though she’s currently prescribed just two.
“I found the right medications and I’m doing a million times better,” she said. “I’m still me, but I’m not as impulsive, I’m not as angry, I’m not as ridiculous as I used to be in my behaviors. I just know that today, I feel comfortable with everything that I’m doing … .”
Amber credits her current mental health state to being both properly medicated and properly treated by a psychiatrist.
“Do [doctors] want you on 12 different medications? Yeah, they do,” she said. “But find a doctor who says, ‘You know what? We’re on this many [medications] right now, but maybe we want to get down to this many … .’ That’s what I found. That’s why I’ve been with my doctor now for seven years.
“He said, ‘All right, you’re on 12 different medications, but we’re going to have you down to two eventually,’” Amber continued. “And damn sure, we are down to two after all these years, just by speaking to each other and actually being honest.”
As she mentioned in her first YouTube video, Amber reiterated this week that mental health treatment is not a “one-size fits all” thing, though she also insisted that self-care is something that everyone needs to prioritize.
“Life is going to be hard everybody, sincerely,” Amber said. “Everybody right now is going through something … but everybody [has to] take care of themselves in different ways.”
“ … in my beginning stages of all of this, I had no clue why I was so different and weird and so angry … ,” Amber recalled of her own adolescence. “You know, if my mom would have known better and my father and everybody would have known better, I believe that they would have been proactive in making sure that something could happen. But we were also poor.
“I bet you right now there are so many parents out there that want to do something and want to help their kids, but they just can’t because they don’t have f**king insurance and they cannot afford it,” she continued.
Amber concluded this week’s video by acknowledging how difficult it may be for parents to learn that their child has a mental health disorder, as some may blame themselves.
“ … they’ve got these studies out [there] connecting [mental health disorders] to the genes and this and that … who cares?” Amber said. “Okay, don’t think about that. What does that have to do with helping your child out? Nothing.”
You can watch Amber’s latest YouTube video below.
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(Photos: YouTube; MTV)
Go away and take all the other Teen Mom trash with you. Im so tired of these loser clowns. 👆🤡 They all suffer from arrested development and think they are owed something by somebody.
If youre tired of them then why are you here?
Sounds like a Nothingburger. Real accountability for her would be specifics! It appears she focused mostly on excuses. She did all that because she was on a million meds, then she was off the meds, etc. I want to hear “I’m sorry to Leah because….”, “I owe Gary and Kristina an apology for……”, “I am doing ……. to get into my kid’s lives”, “this is how I’m working on improving my life….”.
She nor anyone else owes you anything so it doesn’t matter “what you want to hear”
Just focus one what you can control and let the rest alone
She is talking about her experience but she isn’t being real. She doesn’t owe us anything. We are just calling her on her bullshit.
That’s not for you to do though…let the people she’s hurt call her out if that’s what they want to do.
But that’s obviously not what they want to do or they’d have done it already
Betting money one of the 2 scripts is still xanax/klonipin/Valium from her child psychologist. Get a doc for actual adults
An argument can definitely be made that Amber could have a much different life if her parents had gotten her help when she first showed signs of mental illness.
That does not excuse her continued lack of accountability regarding the way she has treated Leah and James over the years. Thank goodness that they both have fathers who stepped up to take care of them.
She has been cancelled & she won’t have a comeback 😞
She’ll have a comeback and it’ll be bigger and better than anything you’ve ever accomplished
Would not take anything back??
Are you fricking kidding me?
How about calling your daughter a dick? How about the machete incident with your son there? The list goes on and. Nothing you would take back? No remorse? You suck.
Very good point.
How do you know she doesn’t have any remorse?
I mean, what’s the point in apologizing for something thats already happened? Its not like she can take it back or change it. All she can do is do better and not repeat the same mistakes.
And like I said on other posts, its not like shes hurt any of us so why does how its handled by the people she’s actually hurt matter so much? Just let them handle their stuff and let it go
Well you can’t apologize for something that hasn’t happened.
What are you talking about?
It’s hard to believe some of this because when she was crashing out, she accused Gary of some horrible things and that was in the last year, long after the prison sentence. Im not saying she was lying but if it was true going off on social media was the worst way to handle it. Her daughter had to witness all that and caused her a lot of pain and suffering. You can’t ever take those things back. It’s even harder cuz Gary has had custody for years and Leah is very close with her dad. It would have been nice if Amber had addressed that. Then I could see her making some real progress. I’m an advocate for mental health and I have struggled with a lot of trauma so I’m not trying to hate on her. It’s more about accountability and making amends to the people she hurt. And I don’t think she should be giving people advice. She should focus on herself.
Good to see Amber finally back on her meds after clearly being off them for so long. Hopefully she can stay on the right path this time and stay healthy
I wish her the best and hope she continues to improve, hopefully one day she can have a relationship with Leah
Downvoting someone for saying they wish her best and hopes she continues to improve is a whole new low Leebee and im sorry some people are such morons
She LOOKS a million times better too!!!