Former Love-Islander Chris Hughes has been offering his support to Jacques O’Neill since he dramatically quit the villa.
The rugby player walked out of the villa last month amid the fall-out from Casa Amor where he was getting to know other girls behind the back of Paige Thorne.
But just as the pair appeared to be getting their relationship back on track, Love Island 2018 contestant Adam Collard made a surprise return as a bombshell and set his sights on Paige.
Jacques, 23, tearfully decided to leave the villa, telling his fellow islanders that he had been struggling for days and needed to go home to ‘get back to himself.’
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mirror’s Jess Saying Live, Love Island alumni Chris revealed that he and Jacques have swapped numbers and have been in regular contact.
“I have actually spoken to Jacques since he came out of the villa,” he said. “I can kind of imagine what he’s been going through in terms of how has been struggling. It is tough and I wanted to make sure he was OK first and foremost. He’s a lovely lad and he is still young.
“A lot of people say that he came across as childish and not grown up on the show in the terms of some of his actions. But he is young and he made a very adult decision to look after himself and he deserves a lot of respect for that.”
Chris himself has been very open about his own mental health struggles, and is an ambassador for the mental health charity CALM where he encourages people to speak out like Jacques if they need help.
He said: “It is very easy to ignore and when we do mental health campaigns we encourage people to speak out and seek help if they need to and that is what he did which is a very grown up thing to do.
“He is also setting an example to other people. He could have stayed in the villa but would have struggled and he wouldn’t have done himself any favours or been true to himself. I have the utmost respect for what he did - that showed a lot of character.”
Love Island has a strict duty of care policy for all its contestants including therapy sessions before, during and after the show, and support in dealing with finances and social media.
There were calls for increased support for the cast after two former islanders – Sophie Gradon from series two and Mike Thalassitis from series three – took their own lives.
Then in February 2020 former host Caroline Flack, 40, also took her own life. But Chris, who attended the Flackstock festival in her memory, has nothing but praise for the ITV show and the support he has been given.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror’s Jess Saying Live, Chris praised the ITV team behind Love Island and say they have been a huge support to him since leaving the show and even now if he needed help they would get it for him within 24 hours.
"The help and support I have had since leaving Love Island has been unbelievable and I know that if I ever need to I can pick up the phone and get help.
“For me it wasn’t just something I struggled with post Love-Island, I struggled before Love Island as well. I think the best work I have done since leaving the villa are the mental health campaigns.
“Coming out of Love Island I had a huge platform and being able to promote stuff that I was going through and other people might be going through and being able to portray that to a huge audience.
“It is so important to keep that conversation going because people do struggle and it is stigmatised. There are men out there who think they can’t talk about their mental health because they are a bloke.”
