Frankie Bridge has bravely opened up to OK! about her hospitalisation after she suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 23.
Reflecting on her admission to London's Nightingale Hospital in 2011, Frankie exclusively told OK! it was a “real relief” to be somewhere she knew she was "going to be taken care of”.
“It was a relief to be in hospital,” said the former Strictly Come Dancing star as she welcomed OK! into her Surrey home. “I definitely wasn’t capable of looking after myself at that point. I had no idea what was going on and I felt completely out of control. I’d lost who I was.”
Frankie Bridge bravely opens up on secret breakdown in psychiatric hospital
Frankie Bridge says her life was a ‘mess’ when she was in The Saturdays as she looks back at decade
The 31 year old continued: “I was exhausted, constantly crying and I couldn’t function any longer. It was a real relief to go somewhere and know I was going to be taken care of. When I look back now I don’t really recognise that person and I’m so grateful I could go there.”
At the time Frankie was at the height of her fame with The Saturdays and was dating her now husband – former footballer Wayne Bridge. The singer recalls how she would put on a brave face for the band's performances, but inside away from the stage things were falling apart and she wasn't coping. She says it was hitting “rock bottom” during a time when she should have been at her happiest is what made her realise how ill she truly was.
Frankie – who is mum to sons Parker, six, and Carter, four, with Wayne – discusses her battle with depression and anxiety in her new memoir, Open: Why Asking For Help Can Save Your Life. She hopes the book will help people who also suffer from mental health issues and give them hope.
“It’s mostly about hope and when your mental health is bad, you lose that hope,” she says of her reasons for writing her book. “I just felt I was a prime example of how you can have a really bad time and still live your life and achieve things.”
Frankie reveals Wayne was the one who called the doctor and took her to hospital on her return from a music video shoot abroad with The Saturdays. Heaping praise on the 39 year old in OPEN, Frankie wrote: “He was my constant, the person who knew me inside out and had seen me at my worst and most vulnerable.
"He made me feel safe and loved. I couldn’t have done it with anyone else."
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OPEN by Frankie Bridge published by Cassell, 6 February 2020, £18.99 hardback (octopusbooks.co.uk).
Also available in ebook and Audiobook.
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