Denise Welch ‘jumped out of a moving car’ in the depths of her postnatal depression battle

Denise Welch spoke out about her battle with depression during an appearance on Loose Women this week.

The actress and television host has been open about her strife with mental illness throughout the years and is known to have suffered bouts of dark depression ever since the birth of her first son, Matt Healy.

Explaining her mental health spiral began aged 30 when her postnatal depression went untreated and ignored by doctors, Denise told her Loose Women co-stars, “I had been a perfectly normal blooming woman in pregnancy. My hair was great, my skin was great, I loved it, I was married to a man I loved. We had a bit of money in the bank.

“Everything around us was fine and then I was plunged into this black almost suicidal, depression. So I knew that it was postnatal depression.”

READ MORE: Pressuring new mums to breastfeed could trigger depression and anxiety

Admitting that she once felt so low that she jumped out of a moving car, the Waterloo Road actress recalled, “I had had a horrible moment where I tried to throw myself out of a taxi when I was with my mum.

“When people say were you trying to end everything, I wasn’t. I was trying to stop the pain, and only those people who’ve had severe depression will know how that feels.”

Denise’s on-screen colleagues, Ruth Langsford, Nadia Sawalha, Stacey Solomon and Brenda Edwards, began to get teary as she explained how her mind struggles were brushed off by medical professionals.

“When I got to the doctor, the doctor said to me, she looked at me and said, well I have five children dear and I just didn’t have time to get depressed.

“That’s what I was up against with quite a lot of people at the beginning.”

Highlighting the poignancy of telling her story on air, Denise went on, “I would have given anything to have turned on my TV and seen someone that I recognise from the television, whether I like them or not, talking about an illness that they lived with, but that they enjoyed the time in between.”