The soap star opened up on her mental health struggles for the first time
The soap star opened up on her mental health struggles for the first time
Lucy Fallon spent five weeks as an inpatient in a psychiatric hospital as she opened up on her mental health struggles that left her at “absolute rock bottom”. The 30-year-old actress who plays Bethany Platt in Coronation Street, spoke for the first time about the experience on the Secure the Insecure podcast.
She left the programme in March 2020 after five years, as the first covid lockdown began and work opportunities slowed, before returning to the role on New Year’s Eve 2023.
Lucy said: “From quite young, I’ve always struggled. I’ve always been quite insecure. That got worse when we went through lockdown because I left Corrie and I wasn’t really getting any work.”
She added: “I was just at the absolute rock bottom that I’ve ever, ever felt. And I really, really, really struggled.
“I had a really bad batch of mental health towards the end of 2020 and I ended up being in The Priory for about five weeks because my mental health was so bad. I couldn’t see a way out of feeling how I was feeling.”
Lucy said her admission to The Priory, a private psychiatric hospital in south-west London, was not her decision.
She said: “I ended up having to go to hospital, and it was from that point that other people were involved – my mum and my sisters and people that I’d worked with before. It almost felt like other people, other factors, were telling me, ‘Right, you need some serious help now. It’s gone a bit too far’.
“I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to go and I even remember getting there. I really, really did not want to go in. At first, I didn’t feel like I was bad enough to be there. It almost felt like this just feels a bit alien and a bit strange, like, I don’t know why I’m here.”
The actress added: “After a few weeks of being there, I was like, OK. I got to grips with it. And actually after a week of being there, I liked it. I felt quite safe.
“I met quite a lot of people there who I sometimes still keep in contact with now.”
Lucy, who is engaged to footballer Ryan Ledson, 28, and shares son Sonny, three, and daughter Nancy, aged 13 months, said leaving the facility was also challenging.
She said: “It took me a while to adjust. Coming out and being in the real world and just having to carry on felt strange. But I also had a really good support system around me.”
She added: “Going and being with my mum and dad for a few weeks after, rather than just going back to my house, was a really nice thing – especially to have your tea cooked for you every night. And all my washing done as well.”
Reflecting on that period, Lucy said: “It seems like a completely different life.” She added: “I feel like that was a totally different version of me. And I’ve been lucky enough to say that I did manage to get myself out of it, because I know for so many people that’s not the reality and you can stay on that level and it’s really hard to get out of feeling like that.”
Lucy said meeting Ryan helped mark a new chapter in her life.
She said: “I would say I still, for a while, felt insecure. I felt like I had so much baggage with everything that had happened. It was a conversation I had with him almost straight away.”
She added: “I just accepted that, that was a blip in my mental health and in my own journey. I do deserve to be happy and to be in the relationship that I’m in, and I deserve the job that I’ve had. I’ve worked really hard.”
Lucy also said: “I don’t know if it was to do with being at The Priory for five weeks. I don’t know if it was that. But things just kind of stayed at a good level for me.”
In early 2022, Lucy suffered a miscarriage. She said: “I felt devastated. I felt like: how can this thing that I thought was going to be this amazing chapter just be taken away?
“I also felt like everybody else could just carry on with what they were doing, and I felt stuck. I can’t lie, that lasted a while. I felt like I really struggled to shake it.”
She added becoming pregnant again helped her through.
Lucy said: “If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have Sonny. Even though it was horrendous, it almost showed me how much I wanted that to be the next chapter in my life.”
Lucy said of her present outlook: “I wouldn’t say that I wake up every morning with a spring in my step. I wake up sometimes and I’m like, I can’t be a**** with this day.”
She added: “But then other days I wake up and I’m like, ‘come on, let’s seize the day’. Let’s go.” Lucy also said: “But I’d say mentally, I feel very content, even though there’s days where I feel a bit s***. Generally, I feel like I’ve got myself together.”
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