Denise Welch: 'I’d like everyone in the world to have clinical depression for 15 seconds'

Denise Welch openly discusses her ongoing battle with depression in the latest episode of Yahoo’s White Wine Question Time podcast.

The 60-year-old former Coronation Street actress and television host says she wishes everyone could temporarily experience clinical depression in order to fully comprehend its severity.

Speaking to host Kate Thornton, Welch said: “I always say – and it may sound cruel or selfish – but I’d like everyone in the world to have clinical depression for 15 seconds and then for it to go and never return so that they’d see difference with just being ‘Oh, I’m depressed” or “I’m fed up’, you know.”

She continued to discuss the numbness she experiences with depression and that you ‘can’t feel anything.’

“I mean, even when my mum died I didn’t get depression. I was emotionally traumatised like any daughter who loved their mum would be, but I didn’t get depression.

“Depression depresses every single emotion, and you lose the ability to love or feel anything. People say it’s sadness; it’s not sadness. If you’re depressed you can’t feel sadness, you can’t feel love, you can’t feel anything,” she said.

Welch’s eldest son, Matthew Healy, is in the band The 1975, and she revealed that one of his group’s songs, is inspired by her talking to him about her depression for the first time.

“You know, I’ve done lots of bad things in my life but I’ve brought up my children to value and support minorities and the LGBT community and to talk openly about mental health.

“And Matt wrote ‘She Lays Down’ which is the last song on his second album which is about his memory of me telling him about my depression. […] I used to pray, beg, whatever that I could love my child. Because it robs you of that emotion.”

In the same episode, Welch continues to talk about how she met her third husband Lincoln Townley, and her struggles with alcoholism.

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