Roseanne: My nine months in psych ward and why I gave up my baby

The star, who will soon be back on Australian screens in the reboot of her classic sitcom Roseanne says she was hit by a car and dragged 30 feet, an accident which she claims changed her whole outlook on life.

‘I had an out-of-body experience,’ she is quoted this week as saying in a National Enquirer interview. ‘I felt like my body died. I remember I left my body and went to a different place.

‘I saw my body below, like some crumpled thing that didn’t belong to me. I went through a white light. It wasn’t frightening. It was wonderful.

‘I remember deciding to leave Earth and then coming back.

‘And then when I came back, I was a totally different person.’

Aged just 17 at the time, she would never be the same. While Roseanne says that things that once bothered her no longer did, it wasn’t all good news.

Her former straight-A school record was history, and she says she couldn’t focus anymore.

Eight months of worrying behaviour later, Rosanne’s parents admitted her to a psychiatric facility, with Roseanne confessing they thought she was ‘out of control.’

‘I was in the mental hospital for eight and a half months,’ she told the publication. ‘I was tranquilised. I was in a stupor for those eight and a half months.’  

When she got out in 1970, she got pregnant, with her parents allegedly demanding she get rid of the baby or leave home. She ended up staying at a Salvation Army home for unwed mothers.

‘The logical thing to do was have an abortion, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it,’ she says.

The baby was instead put up for adoption. It was only when she became famous in the eighties that Roseanne was able to meet up with the daughter she gave away.

Roseanne recalled to People: ‘The day they came to take my baby away, I whispered to her, “You remember this, I’ll see you when you’re 18.” I always knew that. I always knew we would get back.’