Perez Hilton ‘lucid’ after mental health crisis, brother-in-law says
Perez Hilton’s family has revealed new details about the blogger’s health before and after his mental health crisis earlier this month.
On Monday, Hilton’s brother-in-law, Tom (who did not provide a last name), appeared on “The Perez Hilton Podcast With Chris Booker” to talk about the 48-year-old’s self-harming incident that occurred Aug. 4 on a TikTok livestream.
Tom — who is married to Perez’s sister, Barbara Lavandeira — shared that the celebrity gossip columnist was now in a “lucid” state after receiving treatment for his physical injuries and his care would be “transitioning into the mental side of things.”
“He’s going to be going into a facility that is going to focus on his mental recovery,” he said on the podcast. “I don’t think you’re going to see him pop up in a few days.”
On Aug. 4, Miami police responded to calls around 9 p.m. concerning a TikTok livestream where Hilton harmed himself repeatedly with a box cutter and knife and expressed suicidal intent. After authorities safely recovered Hilton, he was placed in a 72-hour hold under Florida’s Baker Act, which allows for detention to assess mental health.
“There was some broken bones,” his brother-in-law said of Hilton’s physical injuries from his self-harming incident. “There [were] some other things stemming back from his sepsis.”
In March, Hilton was hospitalized in Las Vegas for 21 days due to severe sepsis, he shared a video, in which he said God presented himself to him and that he was a changed man. After recovering from the life-threatening illness, Hilton made the decision to relocate his family to Miami in June.
His brother-in-law — who said he had known the blogger for more than 20 years — did not believe the abrupt move was a red flag, considering past relocations to New York City in 2016 and to Las Vegas in 2023, though he did call it “a little surprising.”
“He can be a little impulsive at times; that’s part of his personality,” said Tom. “[But] we’ve never had a situation with him as serious as we’ve ever seen medically with that sepsis situation.”
Born Mario Lavandeira, the Cuban American has been a pop culture personality since the mid-2000s, running a popular online entertainment site. Originally from Miami, Hilton has a large familial support system in the area, which was one of the primary reasons for the move earlier this summer, according to his brother-in-law.
“That part made sense,” said Tom. “There is that structure of support there [in Miami] and he did just go through that near-fatal health scare.”
However, Tom revealed that Perez was not happy with his decision from the moment he landed in his new city.
“Mario, the moving truck isn’t even in Arizona yet,” Tom told Perez. “You’ve been to the airport and the house and you’ve now come to the decision in your head that this was a bad idea.”
Following the mental health crisis, Hilton’s mother, Teresita Lavandeira, filed a petition Aug. 7 for temporary custody of his three minor children, according to the Miami-Dade court case database.
Earlier reporting by The Times stated that Hilton was granted supervised visits with his children, but his brother-in-law said he had not had any contact. “They were not allowed in that section of the facility,” he said, “and eventually we’ll segue them back in.”
To deal with the fallout — and any misinformation out there — the family has hired a public relations team, said Tom. “We were concerned about what bad information was getting out there that [Child Protective Services] may be reading that was just simply not true,” he said.
While Perez undergoes treatment, the family is trying to figure out what could have triggered the mental health crisis.
As for whether Perez Hilton will continue being the saucy online personality the world has come to know — and criticize — Tom seems to have no doubts about that: “He does what he does because he loves doing it. He got into this because he loves celebrity gossip.”
Time staff writer Emily St. Martin contributed to this report.
