Candice Brown has opened up about suffering with clinical depression, chronic phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Candice Brown
The former 'Great British Bake Off' winner admits she turned to baking when things got "really bad", and while she was initially "reluctant" to go on medication, she has been taking "various different" drugs to help out.
She said: "I suffer with clinical depression, chronic phobia and PTSD.
"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**t, 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.
"I'm on medication, I have been for five years, various different ones."
The 34-year-old baker admits she has had to be dragged out of bed by her feet so she would go to work on particularly bad days, and says she has experienced "not very nice thoughts of how I could get out of it".
She said: "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.
"Those were the really bad days. I had not very nice thoughts of how I could get out of it."
Candice admits she was initially angry that she would have to "rely" on medication, but now accepts she has a "chemical imbalance".
Speaking on Frankie Bridge's 'Open Mind' podcast, she added: "Group therapy taught me that bouts of depression will probably be a reoccurring thing.
"It p****d me off that I would have to rely on things. 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."
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