Tamar Braxton, Heather Tom, Don Diamont bb hw
Credit: Image: Howard Wise/JPI

Tamar Braxton blames reality television for “the demise I was experiencing.”

On the road to recovery, Tamar Braxton — briefly Chef Chambre on The Bold and the Beautiful — took to Twitter Thursday to speak out about the circumstances surrounding her suicide attempt two weeks ago. “I was betrayed, taken advantage of, overworked and underpaid,” she posted. “I wrote a letter over two months ago asking to be freed from what I believed was excessive and unfair. I explained in personal detail the demise I was experiencing.”

And? “My cry for help went totally ignored,” continued Braxton, who has been a cast member of Braxton Family Values for almost a decade, starred with former husband Vince Herbert in Tamar & Vince, co-hosted The Real and competed in Season 21 of Dancing With the Stars. “Who I was [began] to mean little to nothing, because it would only be how I was portrayed on television that would matter. It was witnessing the slow death of the woman I became, that discouraged my will to fight. I felt like I was no longer living. I was existing for the purpose of a corporation’s gain and ratings, and that killed me.

“Mental illness is real,” she added. “We have to normalize acknowledging it and stop associating it with shame and humiliation.”

Next up for Braxton was supposed to be her own WE tv series, Tamar Braxton: Get Ya Life (the premiere of which has been postponed from its original date of July 30; watch a preview below). Instead, she hopes to advocate for those suffering from psychological issues, “including those of us [whose] mental illness was only a result from the toxic, systemic bondage that dwells [in] television. It was only God’s grace and his mercy on my attempt to end my pain and my life that I am here to utilize my voice.”

You can read her full statement above. And while you’re here, you might want to check out the below photo gallery of the fallen stars whose ranks she came so close to joining.