Teen Mom Amber Portwood, 21, had to be rushed to the hospital in her native Indiana on Tuesday after an apparent suicide attempt. This is very sad news, and something I wouldn’t expect from Amber. She does not seem like a stable person, but she comes across as more angry and combative than depressed and she has a lot of friends around her that are shown on Teen Mom. (Not to mention random ex con boyfriends.) Portwood was found unconscious by police on Tuesday afternoon after taking an overdose of pills. A rope or string was found tied around her neck. She is currently in the hospital and is being held for evaluation. Here’s more, from Radar:
Police in Anderson, Indiana have confirmed Star magazine’s exclusive report of Amber Portwood’s suicide attempt.
A police statement reads: “Late this morning (11:34 a.m.), Anderson Police responded to a call at a residence in the 1300 block of Pleasant Meadow Drive. According to the caller, 21-year-old Amber L. Portwood was depressed and threatening to end her life. The victim, who did not appear to be injured, was transported to a local medical facility for further evaluation.”
An Anderson police source also confirms that the call was not made by Amber at her home, but by “a relative” at a different location, who advised the authorities to check on Amber. A source told Star that the mother of Amber’s on-again, off-again boyfriend, Gary Shirley, made the phone call to the police.
The source has provided Star with further details of the dramatic scene at Amber’s home. “Two policemen arrived, found her face-up on the couch and immediately called for an ambulance. When two EMT workers arrived, they removed the rope that Amber had loosely knotted around her neck. They tried speaking with her, but she was in and out of consciousness and couldn’t respond; she was just moaning. They gave her an oxygen mask, put her on a gurney, and rushed her to the hospital.”
Amber is currently still being evaluated in St. Johns Hospital; Gary Shirley visited her there for five minutes earlier today.
[From Radar]
That’s so sad! Amber seems to have some kind of drug or at least an alcohol addiction and often looked blitzed out of her mind on the show. I hope she gets the help she needs for her sobriety and her peace of mind. She only just earned custody of her two year-old daughter Leah back, although Leah seems to be cared for primarily by her two grandmothers rather than Amber or her ex, Leah’s dad Gary.
photos are from 4/11/11. Credit: WENN.com
she is surrounded by ENABLERS, if fam members are raising her kid !
A). Leah’s only 2, she’s still young enough to be adopted by a loving family/pack of wolves and not be traumatised.
B). This isn’t a “suicide attempt”, it’s a half-assed cry for attention now that everyone’s moved on to the next batch of moronic teens determined to prove that the future depicted in Idiocracy is only a couple of generations away. My cancer-striken friend (bridge) and my Dad’s depressed cousin (handgun) both succeeded first time because they both genuinely intended to die.
C). I’m going to blame MTV for this. Play some damn pop videos and stop making celebrities out of irresponsibility!
@ tapioca
“My cancer-striken friend (bridge) and my Dad’s depressed cousin (handgun) both succeeded first time because they both genuinely intended to die.”
Wow. So sorry for you. that must have been traumatizing.
She has had depression that was documented on the show and she was put on meds at one point.
This. SHow. WTF?
Irresponsible people who have children too young, and continue their irresponsibility by FORGETTING THEY HAVE CHILDREN TO CARE FOR and try to commit suicide.
Is she mentally ill then? Her child needs stable custody and she needs to get help to get her head screwed on straight, to realize the truth of her reality (she’s a MOM now) and to roll up her sleeves, GROW UP and take some responsibility for herself.
I think more than anything, we as a society have enabled the Victim Generation. Our first reacion may be pity for her, but honestly, she’s not deserving of it. I pity the mother in Sudan who was gang raped and fears for her life daily…NOT some US teen with her own show on MTV.
This girl is the most ungrateful, stupid person who doesn’t realize how blessed and LUCKY her circumstance really is. Trade her lot with a teen mom in any third world nation, should knock things into perspective. Maybe MTV ought to do a damn show about that instead of inspiring more vapid, shallow do-nothing fame seekers.
I hate to say it but I agree with @Tapioca when a person wants to kill themselves, they usually succeed and nobody knows until after they find the dead body and a suicide note. She attempted it in dramatic form no less. What’s up with a loose string tied around her neck? It just seems really odd. Either way, the girl needs help. Whether it be rehab or being committed. She has a lot of addictions and a lot of issues. I feel for Leah, she deserves a stable environment and these two have yet to deliver that.
@Maren:
Thanks.
My friend (Raph) had always said she was going to go on her own terms when she knew it was terminal, so whilst it was obviously a shock when it happened it was her decision and (most of) her family and friends understood her decision. My Dad’s cousin actually waited until his father had passed away – at the age of 99 years & 11 months, no less – and followed him a fortnight later.
It just makes me angry when young, healthy people don’t realise that their problems are temporary, but death is forever.
Did they film that too?
What a self-absorbed little bitch.
@ tapioca
your friend raph had every right to do this. Terminal cancer means that you probably die very slowly, very painful and in a hospital that tries to keep you alive as long as possible.
Assisted suicide is allowed in a couple of countries and we discussed this very intensely in my highschool religious class.
If you are very sick and contemplate your decision very well, you should be allowed to go on your own terms.
your dads cousin: It was a nice gesture (you cant say it like that, but you know what I mean) to wait until his father died, because he knew that this would have killed him, and he didnt want to bring that upon his/your family.
I sincerely wish you well and hope that you are spared of more experiences like those in your life.
I feel sorry for the little girl. She is the real one suffering.
She has a lot of issues. I think this was a cry for help. I used to watch teen mom but I’m too cheap, so I just get basic cable. But when I was still watching she had gone to see a doctor & was diagnosed with depression and given meds.
I watched the second season of this show, but I don’t remember that she got meds for depression. Sorry I forgot to put that in then.
I could be mistaken, but I think she had anxiety on the show, not depression which is pretty different… not that her life is less anxiety provoking now…hmmm… at any rate she can be a good mother even with anxiety/ depression/ mental illness if she were responsible and mature… I am not holding my breath for that though…
I’ve never watched, but how old are these teen moms usually on this show? If she’s 21 now, and the child is two years old, that would make her 18 at the youngest. When I think “teen mom,” I think 15-16 year old.
Freakin sad. People love the carnival freak show but never think about those involved, especially the little girl.
Everytime she gets custody of the child she does something to screw it up. Personally, I think she’s constantly fighting Gary for custody because she wants to make his life miserable (not because she loves or cares for her daughter). This girl is devoid of all emotion and uses her daughter as a tool to torture her ex and to gain sympathy/garner attention.
Maybe it was for anxiety I haven’t watched since the new bunch came along. Either way she has lots of enablers and self medicated whatever problems she has. I do think there is more to it than her just being a bitch and a horrible person like people are saying. I think one of her problem is she doesn’t have coping skills, when things go wrong she just freaks out.
@ Clare most of the teen moms I’ve seen on the show are 16-17. I think Leah is due to turn 3 soon. But I thought she already had, so I don’t know
I have read that she has been prescribed Xanax and uses it frequently. That alone will exacerbate depression AND create instability where non existed before. You cannot use it more than very occasionally. I agree this was a cry for help, but I don’t think she deserves our contempt for the expression of her pain. Having been in that kind of pain, you honestly think that your baby is better off without you. But still deep down, you are tied so tight to this world (and to your child) that you can’t quite bring yourself to finish the deal.
My deepest sympathies as always, to those who have experienced parental or other suicides. 🙁
“It just makes me angry when young, healthy people don’t realise that their problems are temporary, but death is forever.”
My nephew (21) shot himself over a girl. It’s been over 6 months and his parents are still utterly distraught. His twin will never be the same. I feel your anger Tapioca. (and grief, sorrow, heartbreak, and helplessness too).
I have a severe anxiety disorder that is treated heavily with medication. A side effect s i become depressed, and for that they combat it with anti-depressants. she may very well have the same reactions i have, only didn’t know what it was and never got help. i have a family and core support group of friends who keep me inline and notice when i’m not right so i can go to therapy or the doctor for adjustments.
as we well know Amber doesn’t have that. i feel for he, but i cosign on with poopie, a nice rabid wolf pack would do a better job raising Leah.
@ tapioca & Jezi – I’m sorry for your loss, tapioca. My husband’s cousin tried to kill himself a few years ago by jumping off the Bay Bridge and failed. Last Christmas, he succeeded. It was devastating to his entire family, which is a considerably sized brood. (Hubs told that after cousin had survived the jump, he felt he was “cursed” or was “on the dark side” or something like that.)
@ LadyD – I’m sorry for the loss of your nephew. I had a childhood friend who, when he was in high school, went into the woods (in WA) and shot himself with one of his father’s hunting rifles. Because he just knew in his heart he was such a disappointment to his father. This was over 20 years ago, and I still don’t understand what could have been so bad. He was a good kid; respectful; smart, good grades; good looking: the whole deal.
As for Amber, girl is a mess. She has (probably) always been a mess, and (probably) always will be. This may very well be a turning point in her life. Or it may not. But whatever the case, someone needs to remove Leah from the crazy.
In the first season, Amber started taking medication for both anxiety and depression (which an SSRI would take care of both…like Lexapro for instance). The thing with those medications (and like most medications used for long term treatment) is that you have to start at a lower dose and keep building up until you and your doctor find a good stabilizing point. You also need to be on point with taking your medication AND you shouldn’t be binge drinking (which Amber does…ha).
The fact is, she probably doesn’t take her medication the right way, isn’t on the right dose, probably doesn’t seek therapy or counseling, and may not even have the RIGHT medication. It is a trial and error process.
The girl needs help. It’s sad that she has done a suicide attempt but BUT now she can at least be in a supervised setting and get treatment right now.
so let me see if i have this right: if people fail their suicide attempts they are half-assed losers and not “serious” about dying, but if they do die they are selfish? mmmkay. i hope you guys never experience a devastating illness or a depression so crushing you cannot imagine life going on. if you do i hope there are people a bit more compassionate to help you than you seem to be toward others.
i don’t know anything about this amber girl (never watched the show) but obviously she’s got some problems and needs help. also, her kid needs to be in a stable home and probably needs therapy too.
@tapioca: YOU NAILED IT. That is totally the way it is.
At this point, from what I have seen from both Amber and Gary, I am on Team Pack Of Wolves.
I’m sorry about your friend and your Dad’s cousin. 🙁 I had a brother and a Dad who committed suicide and it’s rough.
@tapioca: YOU NAILED IT. That is totally the way it is.
At this point, from what I have seen from both Amber and Gary, I am on Team Pack Of Wolves.
I’m sorry about your friend and your Dad’s cousin. 🙁 I had a brother and a Dad who committed suicide and it’s rough.
I am relieved to read that at least a small percentage of commentors feel some compassion for Amber. Until you have walked in someone else’s shoes, you cannot KNOW what it’s like for someone else. We all experience life differently: what seems like a small annoyance to one person can feel like a major violation of human rights to another. I’m grateful that I was 25 when my oldest (unplanned pregnancy) was conceived. If I were only 19, I believe things would have been disasterous for her.
sad but now at least hopefully her mother or someone more responsible will raise Leah because deserves so much better than Amber can give.
That’s sad. As much as I dislike this girl and think she’s a terrible mom, I wouldn’t want her to hurt herself. I hope she gets the help she desperately needs. Maybe MTV should stop exploiting this girl and get her help.
tapioca: i agree with all your points…
“The victim, who did not appear to be injured, was transported to a local medical facility for further evaluation…”
This could come across as insensitive…but I’m just giving you the perspective of how the psychologist and doctors will view this (based on the description of how the cops found her that is quoted in this article):
When assessing people you have to figure out how lethal their method is (among other things, but the acronym for suicide assessment is SLAP) and bottom line, if she’s lying face up on the couch with a rope around her neck then it’s more a “cry for help” than an actual suicide attempt.
I apologize, I know that could come across insensitive. But it’s how she went about doing it..if she had tried to hang herself in the traditional sense then it’d be a suicide attempt. This situation she is in (just from what is being presented here) sounds like a woman that desperately needs help but hasn’t gotten it yet. At least she will get that in the hospital.
My heart goes out to all of those who have lost people to suicide and I know anger is part of the grieving process BUT I am always appalled when I hear the living making comments like “It just makes me angry when young, healthy people don’t realise that their problems are temporary, but death is forever”. how do you know their problems are temporary? Clearly if these young people were healthy they would not be killing themselves. No one kills themselves “lightly”, you have to reach a level of undescribable pain and hopelessness to get to that level. I have much empathy for them. You can not know someones pain or their resistance level to said pain without walking in their shoes. Which will never happen, because if you went through all they went through, being that you are not them, you might have a different reaction. To all the people who’ll say: I’m depressed too, I got manic depression too, I got it real bad…. but I’m still here. Good for you! Kudos to you! Kudos for finding a way to function. It’s a struggle but your sticking with it and it’s great! People who kill themselves want an end to their suffering and they see no other solution, there might have been help available to them, then again how many people you know drift from medication to medication, therapist to therapist in a haze of hopelessness and zombiness just looking for that thing that will make them ok with living? There aren’t solutions for everyone, once you hit that threshold no one but you knows how much more you can take. Life sometimes has to become a choice, that you’ll stick with it no matter what and if you’re not capable/able of making that choice, sometimes you’ll make the other one. In the end we all want the same thing: no suffering.
So yeah empathy for the dead and those left behind. You only know your pain not that of others.
Yeah. I don’t buy that she was serious, or she would’ve tried something. Or she’d have a history of suicidal ideation. She’s a drama queen, fake, liar, disgusting piece of humanity. UGH.
My heart breaks for actual suicidal people, and their loved ones. Not for this beast. FTR I have worked with actual suicidal people, and I’ve not worked with Amber. But I have been subjected to that awful show, and she is the worst one on it, which is saying a lot. She pays no attention to her daughter, and abuses her boyfriend. I’d like to feed her to a Great White shark, except I don’t want the shark to get sick.
original kate and dubdub2000: Thank you.
Sorry to say, but sometimes people are serious about killing themselves, yet are found before it’s too late. I cut my wrist when I was 16 and would have bled out, had my mom not taken apart the bathroom door to get to where I was at, held a bandage to my wrist to just stop the bleeding, and called an ambulance on the phone. So please don’t say that if you are found, you’re not serious about dying.
I do think that Amber needs therapy, both for mental issues and for her emotional issues as well. She’s got some serious anger management problems. I think her daughter Leah is best off not being around her for right now.
I would also like to add that just because she had a loose rope around her neck (as apposed to a tight one), doesn’t mean her attempt was not serious! From the report it was clear that she had overdosed on something as well! A friend of the family was found barely breathing after a serious attempt at suicide by swallowing an entire bottle of Xanax. The exact drug that Amber has access to. She was in a coma for a week.
I think the main point here is this: When you are a teen or a very young adult, everything seems permanent. There is no “seeing your way through” whatever the problem is, because there doesn’t seem to be a tomorrow without being plagued by that same problem.
I don’t think ANYONE is necessarily judging young people who kill (or attempt to kill) themselves. It’s more an impotent, silent rage. “Why didn’t I see it? Why didn’t he/she say anything to me? What if I could have only said/done something, ANYTHING to help?” These are the questions that plague family members and friends in the aftermath of a suicide. Anyone who says otherwise is lying.
And I am also Team Pack of Wolves, unless said Pack of Wolves is in any way related to MTV.
It’s not right to call someone’s suicide attempt attention-whoring. Yes, sometimes it is a “call for help” because someone can really want to die, but not go all the way at the last minute because his/her self-preservation instinct (a very human trait) kicks in. This doesn’t make the act any less serious. Amber was not the one who called the paramedics. She was serious enough that she still could have died from this overdose. She needs therapy (which I’ve said before) and some compassion. She isn’t an angel, but no one is. She has done horrible things in her life, and clearly she’s feeling messed up and guilty over them. If anything, that shows she does have a conscience. Instead of judging her now, this is the part where we allow our humanity to take over and extend a little forgiveness to this girl. She’s only 21 for Pete’s sake. She’s still getting this stuff figured out, and she has certainly made her fair share of dumb decisions. But we need to be open to redemption if we want her to grow up and have a stable life for her kid, instead of hearing about her succeeding in her next suicide attempt.
I have no doubt that she reads blogs like this, and the comments she sees about herself are not pretty. And she knows she’s done things that are unacceptable, so I’m sure it’s easy for her to feel like she deserves them, and even worse. But at some point, you either break completely or you get help. I hope this moment made her choose to get help. And I will not judge anyone for that. And I think it’s sick and sanctimonious to kick someone when they’ve already hit rock bottom.
I can’t believe people feel sympathy or empathy or this girl. She knew his mom would call the police which is why she told her. She was not serious about dying, just wants attention. People are talking about her “pain”…um, yeah, she feels sorry for herself a lot even though she’s rich, doesn’t need to work, and has a healthy daughter. Boohoo. So sad for
her. There are people in this word we should truly feel compassion for, but this spoiled, selfish, ungrateful girl is not one of them. No one should feel sorry for her! Feel sorry for people with real problems.
Out of all the mothers on the show she is by far the worst.. I dont think she intended to kill herself but just to get attention. She doesnt deserve to have her daughter because she is just to unstable.. Now she is a mom who only thinks about herself.. Poor Gary for what he had to put up with.