Denise Welch has relived the 'terrifying' moment she first realised she was suffering a mental health episode, not long after she gave birth to oldest son Matty Healy.
For years now, Loose Women star and Coronation Street actress Denise has been very open and candid about her issues with depression, speaking about her battle on social media and in her acclaimed novel The Unwelcome Visitor.
And, to highlight the importance of Mental Health Awareness Week, Denise appeared as a guest on Wednesday's Good Morning Britain, to join hosts Susanna Reid and Martin Lewis and turn the clock back to when she first realised that she was struggling, having fully enjoyed being pregnant with now 1975 frontman Matty.
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Denise explained: "I loved being pregnant right to the very end....I loved every single minute of it, I was blooming. Five days later I had a panic attack and I had never been an anxious mother.
"I woke up after very little sleep and the whole lactation process had stopped. Now I had gone from full breast feeding breasts to nothing. Nowadays, 34 years later, that would have apparently been a huge hormonal red flag. At the time, I was told in no uncertain terms 'oh, that only happens if a spouse, or a parent or the baby dies,' - that's what the midwife said to me - 'You'll have to go out and get some bottles.'"
Elaborating on how things got worse, Denise added: "Within a day of that, I was living in an area of Crouch End I'd lived in for years; I started to get this increasing feeling of unreality and within 24 hours, my mum found me trying to crawl out of a window in the flat. I'd lost all sense of reality."
When asked by Martin how she felt in that moment, knowing something was wrong, Denise replied: "It was the most terrifying thing."
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