Great British Bake Off’s Candice Brown has opened up about five-year battle with depression

Candice Brown has opened up about depression.

The Great British Bake Off star has spoken out about depression, revealing that she has been on antidepressants and medication for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for the past five years.

The baker, who admitted that she suffers with chronic phobia as well as clinical depression and PTSD, revealed that she has even considered self-harm in the past.

“I suffer with clinical depression, chronic phobia and PTSD,” Candice told singer Frankie Bridge when she appeared on her podcast Open Mind.

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“It’s hard and people don’t realise, it’s a real battle. People might be like ‘Oh she’s jumping on the bandwagon’ but they’ve got no idea what has been going on in my brain for the past five or six years."

“It’s been s***, sometimes I get angry and it’s probably going to be with me forever. When it got really bad, baking was what I would do.”

Addressing how she deals with the mental health issues, Candice revealed that she has tried many different types of medication of the past years, including sleeping pills and anxiety medication Valium.

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“I’m on medication, I have been for five years, various different ones,” Candice revealed.

"At its worse I was being dragged out of bed by my feet and the duvet being shut in the bathroom, so there was nothing on the bed, so I had to get up,” she continued to tell the former Saturdays singer.

“Go to work, you have to get up,” added the former PE teacher. “Those were the really bad days. I had not very nice thoughts of how I could get out of it.”

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Close friend Frankie then asked, “Thoughts of it will be easier if you’re not here?”

To which Candice responded, “Yes. But if there is a physical injury as well people can see that and understand it,” alluding to how she considered self harm in the past.

“I was reluctant at first to go on medication. I got angry at myself actually because I was relying on something else,” she confessed.

Candice explained how group therapy helped her to start to feel better and accept the condition, revealing that it taught the star that “bouts of depression will probably be a reoccurring thing.

“It p****d me off that I would have to rely on things,” she continued. “Now I know it’s not my fault, it’s a chemical imbalance."

“I started on one pill and it makes your body really bad, it was a balance of medication, sleeping pills and diazepam for anxiety.”