Denise Welch has opened up about her mental health struggles being ‘triggered by childbirth’.
The Loose Women star, 66, has been open about her struggles with depression and alcohol addiction in the past.
And she’s now revealed that it stems from her hormones, saying it’s ‘probably triggered by childbirth’.
In a new interview, Denise said she feels the best she ever has, after recovering from a breakdown in 2019.
She said: ‘If I could bottle how I’m feeling right now, I’d be a billionaire.
‘I always knew the origin of my illness was hormonal, probably triggered by childbirth — it took 20 years to get anyone to accept that.
‘I’ve been shouting from the rooftops about our mental health since 1991.’
Denise shares sons Louis, 23, and The 1975’s Matty, 35, with ex-husband Tim Healy.
She went on to OK!: ‘In 2019, I had what we used to call a breakdown — I get tingling in my hands, the colour drains from my life, I can feel it coming on.’
The TV star decided to share her struggles online, and realised it ‘resonated’ with others after she went viral, and later wrote a book, The Unwelcome Struggle.
Since then, she found something ‘shifted’, which she believes could be linked to being post-menopausal.
‘I haven’t had an episode since. I’ll never, ever say it’s “gone”,’ she said.
‘All I know is for the first time in 35 years, I don’t wake up frightened of my illness. Something righted itself.
‘I don’t wake up with a subconscious dread, the constant narrative, “Do I feel OK? S**t, it’s dark today, how’s that going to affect me…” That’s gone.’
During Mental Health Awareness week last year, Denise spoke about how her episodes of depression cause her to be ‘silent’ which can make her ‘almost catatonic’.
She said: ‘It’s good to talk, of course it is, but this is more for the people who love and live with those people.
‘Often with depression, you can’t talk, you go silent is what happens to me, so people ought to look out for when there are those changes in behaviour, when someone who is normally very chatty and very sociable and very outgoing, suddenly withdraws, those are big signs.
‘When I had it, there was nowhere really to go for help. That’s why I was sort of a lone wolf talking about it.’
The Hollyoaks star went on: ‘What happens is that sometimes if you’re in a deep depression, which I’ve been in many times…, although thankfully since 2019 I haven’t had a serious episode, but it has made me almost catatonic.
‘And once the depression was so thick, it was almost like I had a Bell’s palsy… under those circumstances if someone had said to me go for a walk, I wouldn’t have been able to.’
Bell’s palsy is a condition which causes temporary weakness or lack of movement affecting one side of the face, according to the NHS.
She also recalled one of her first ‘terrifying’ episodes of post-natal depression after giving birth to Matty, and said the 1975’s song She Lays Down is based on her struggles.
‘I started to get this increasing feeling of unreality and within 24 hours of that my mum found me trying to crawl out of a window of the flat. I’d lost all sense of reality,’ she said.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Denise added that she ‘never understood the stigma’ over mental health, but wanted to stress the importance of ‘supporting everybody’.
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