When Andrea McLean took her place on the Loose Women set in May 2020, she had no idea she was about to bare her soul on live TV.
Under the glare of the studio lights, the 52-year-old found herself opening up about having a nervous breakdown - something that she had previously only discussed with her friends and her fellow panellists.
But despite her fear of the viewers knowing what she had been through, Andrea said it felt therapeutic to be honest and she could finally start to come to terms with her ordeal.
"Like most things in my life that I've been open about, it happened accidentally," she says. "I can't remember who asked me but they said, 'How are you coping with it [the Covid lockdown]?' And I said, 'Well, I'm really glad that last year, I had a breakdown. I've spent a year building my mental strength back up so that I'm actually in the best place I could possibly be to cope with something like a pandemic.' And it kind of came out my mouth before I realised I was telling the whole world that I had a breakdown.
"You've overheated, you've broken down. We're all just human beings. And I think I'm actually really glad I said it because we need to be more open about the fact that there are moments in our lives when we aren't coping. It's all very well to say, 'Oh, it's good to talk and reach out,' but there's still a stigma and shame, especially for women who are seen as doing well and holding it all together. And that's the joy of Loose Women. You forget the people watching and just have a conversation. But the beauty of that was I actually opened the doors for me to realize there's no shame."
Looking back, Andrea describes 2019 as a "really rough year" where she was trying to be the "perfect mother and wife". She left the ITV talk show in December 2020 to concentrate on her mental health and spend more time with her family husband of seven years Nick Feeney and her children Finlay, 20, and Amy, 15.
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