Helen Flanagan felt ‘children would be better without me’ as she reflects on ‘tough’ year during first Christmas with kids since breakdown
Former Coronation Street star Helen Flanagan has revealed she hit rock bottom last year, experiencing severe mental health struggles that left her feeling suicidal following her split from Scott Sinclair.
The actress shared in a candid social media post that she “thought her kids would be better off without her” during her darkest moments in 2022.
Flanagan disclosed that alongside her mental health crisis, she had lost “basically all her money” and suffered multiple family fall-outs during what she described as a devastating period.
The mother-of-three opened up about the contrast between her Christmas celebrations in 2023 and 2024, detailing how she spent last year’s festive period alone in bed while her children were with her ex-partner.
During Christmas 2023, Flanagan allowed Sinclair to have their children, explaining: “I live really north and he lives really south… I knew I had to be fair.”
The actress only managed a brief visit to her parents’ house when her father called her, spending the rest of the day in bed.
Her struggles intensified during a subsequent New Year’s trip to Bali with her three children, where her daughter Matilda was hospitalised with Bell’s Palsy.
The holiday proved particularly challenging as Flanagan was also grappling with stress about an upcoming six-month theatre tour.
“I remember feeling very heavy mentally and stressed,” she wrote, describing her concerns about leaving her children and potentially needing to arrange home schooling, which their father opposed.
She later withdrew from the theatre tour while battling psychosis triggered by her ADHD medication.
Flanagan revealed her mental health deteriorated to a point where she questioned her ability to parent, revealing: “My mental health was so bad I thought maybe my kids would be better off without me and maybe they would be better off with their dad as he’s more level headed than me.”
“I love my kids more than words can say but when you are not well you’re not well,” she added in her emotional social media post.
The actress described experiencing a “very scary” psychotic episode, explaining: “I was seeing things and I felt like I was in danger all the time.”
She admitted to going into “survival mode” following her separation from Sinclair, saying: “Instead of processing it all, I threw myself into work and shut off my emotions.”
The breakdown came to a head earlier this year when she was “mentally and physically breaking down”.
Speaking about her split from Sinclair for the first time on The Mail’s Life of Bryony podcast, Flanagan described their relationship as “toxic”.
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“No disrespect to the father of my children, you know, I’ve had three children with him, and I always have a lot of love for him,” she said, but the couple who broke up in 2022 after 13 years are experiencing communication difficulties.
“I’m on block at the moment on Scott’s phone. I really am,” she revealed. “We were just 19, and I just don’t think we had that time to grow until we’ve split up.
“We do each other’s f***ing head in. But I know he always will have a love for me.”