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Will Young felt suicidal an hour before going on stage to perform on 'Strictly Ballroom' - Attitude Skip to main content
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Home News News World

8 August 2018

Will Young felt suicidal an hour before going on stage to perform on ‘Strictly Ballroom’

The 'Pop Idol' winner called the Samaritans after an awful reaction to PTSD

By Steve Brown

Will Young revealed he called the Samaritans after having suicidal thoughts earlier this year.

The Pop Idol winner was set to go on stage for the press night of the new West End show Strictly Ballroom but just one hour before curtain call, he had an “awful reaction” to treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and didn’t know who to speak to but dialled the helpline.

While speaking to John Bishop on his W series In Conversation With… Young revealed his mental health problems were caused by a childhood trauma he had buried.

He said: “I had boarding school, that was a hideous thing for me, really abusive teachers, it was really bad.

“That was one big trauma to get over, I had completely buried it. It came up and knocked me for six.

“I was emotionally hijacked back to that place. Particularly one teacher who was abusive in that way.

“I had a really awful reaction to some treatment. An hour before press night I was on the phone to the Samaritans and I thought, ‘I have never felt that, so I thought something is going on here’.

“I’d never had these suicidal thoughts. I’m happy to talk about it and I’m not ashamed of it and I love the fact that I called the Samaritans.

”The woman who I spoke to was brilliant. I kept calling her Doris. 

“I don’t think she was called Doris but I thought, ‘I have one up on her because I want to kill myself and she isn’t going to rectify it’.

“She was amazing. So I’m going to talk about it. It’s not so much inner demons, I just have a physical illness.

“I have a nervous system that fires up and can send me into a complete state of vigilance and it happened about five or six years ago. It has calmed down a lot.

“Initially I had a thing called de-personalisation and de-realisation, where I couldn’t see my face in the mirror and that was really scary.”

John Bishop in Conversation with Will Young airs on Thursday on W at 10pm. 

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