Frankie Bridge reveals she’s suffering with PTSD after spending 2025 being ‘the sickest I’ve been in years’ as she opens up about ongoing health battles: ‘I can feel the depression creeping in’

Frankie Bridge has given an update on her ongoing health battles, as she revealed she’s battling post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after being ‘the sickest I’ve been for years’ throughout 2025.

The Loose Women star, 36, shared a candid YouTube vlog on Monday, where she admitted that her mood had been ‘really low’ in the lead-up to 2026, as she’d been nauseous all week. 

She explained she could ‘feel the depression just creeping in’ due to her anxiety that  gut issues and mental health struggles would continue on for another year.

A forlorn Frankie began the video: ‘This is my worst time of the year, every year. I can feel the low mood and depression just creeping in.’

Apologising to fans for being ‘a Debby Downer’, she explained: ‘Had nearly 10 hours sleep last night and I’m still tired. I just feel gross, I just feel off.

‘I just don’t feel like I have that New Year, new me vibe, which I know is only a temporary thing anyway, – well for me, normally it is, it doesn’t really last, but I need it.

‘I need that little kick up the butt. Today I’ve sat around feeling sorry for myself, my mood has been really low.’

Detailing the reason for her despondency, the mother-of-two said she was coping with feelings of PTSD related to her year of poor health.

Frankie explained: ‘I’ve had a bit of anxiety because I’ve had this nausea since Boxing Day.  

‘This time last year, for 2025, I was like, “It’s going to be my healthiest year. I’m going to look after myself properly. I have lots of gut issues, I’ve got to really work on them, I’m going to eat healthily, work out”.

‘I really did do all that, and then I was probably the sickest I’ve been for years for most of the year with my gut – like, loads of issues.’ 

She added: ‘I just had this, like, PTSD almost when this year started of like, f***, I already feel like s***.

‘I was like, “Oh my god, I’m going to go into this year and I’m going to be ill all year again” and just got down on myself a little bit, which is no use to anyone.’

Last May, the Saturdays star was hit with two bouts of gastroenteritis – inflammation of the stomach and intestines that typically causes diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea and stomach cramps.

At the time, she told her 1.5million Instagram followers: ‘I’ve basically had gastroenteritis twice back to back, which I very rarely get to be honest and it has completely wiped me out and been awful. 

‘I feel like my gut has massively suffered and it feels still really fragile. My immunity has been so bad.’

In her vlog, Frankie said she’d been trying hard to pull herself out of her low mood by attempting to get back into a healthy routine ahead of her sons Parker, 12, and Carter, ten – whom she shares with husband Wayne Bridge – returning to school.

She said: ‘I just feel like I need some order back in my life. I’m not very good at not having a routine.

‘I just feel a bit sorry for myself. Before the cinema, I said to my friend, “Do you want me to come pick you up?” Just because I just felt like I don’t want to be on my own in the car. Don’t know what’s going on.’ 

Frankie – who rose to fame as a member of S Club Juniors when she was aged just 12 – has also spoken candidly about her struggles with anxiety and depression.

‘I was anxious from the womb. It’s who I am,’ she previously told The Guardian. ‘As a child, my thoughts would happen at night-time. I’d struggle to breathe and have stomach aches. Depression came in my late teens.’

Her mental health reached the point where she chose to receive inpatient psychiatric care at the age of 21 – and this helped her manage her symptoms better.

She said: ‘Psychiatric hospital made me realise I wasn’t alone. I wasn’t sectioned. I chose to go and stayed a month. Soon, a massive weight lifted.’

However, Frankie recently confessed that she fears her mental health struggles make her a ‘burden’ on her family.

Opening up on Loose Women in August, she said that when she has a ‘dip’ she starts to think that Wayne and their sons ‘would be better off with someone else.’

She explained: ‘For me, having depression and anxiety, I often feel like you become a bit of a weight on the family. 

‘You don’t need to be cared for in the same way, but I feel like if I’m going through a dip, and my depression is particularly bad, I feel like I’m bringing a bad aura and a bad feeling into the house. 

‘I do often think of Wayne and the kids and think, “They’d have been better off with someone who didn’t have those issues”.’

A visibly emotional Frankie went on to explain that she wishes her family could be around someone who is ‘naturally happy all the time and didn’t have those dips.’

‘I feel sorry for them sometimes that they have to deal with me,’ she admitted. ‘You do feel like a bit of a burden sometimes.’

The singer has also been open about having ketamine therapy to treat her depression, hailing it as ‘life changing’ and the ‘only thing that really helps me long term’.

She turned to the controversial therapy after learning she had ‘treatment-resistant depression’, making antidepressants ineffective.

‘I started taking antidepressants when I was about 18 and I still ended up in hospital when I was about 21 with really bad depression and anxiety,’ she told the Loose Women panel.

‘I’ve had like tests done and my body isn’t able to create serotonin or to keep it. So even if I’m taking antidepressants it’s almost counter productive.

‘But because I’ve been on them for so long for now the fear of coming off them is really scary because I’m like would I end up back in hospital again? I’ve got children now, a husband.;

Frankie went on: ‘I’ve taken myself off of antidepressants before and the side effects of coming off these things are brutal. I spent two weeks in bed, I felt awful.’

In a recent YouTube vlog, she addressed her use of ketamine therapy to fans, saying that while she had initially found the idea it ‘terrifying’, the treatment had ‘been making such a positive difference’ on her mental health.

Speaking in October, she said: ‘Obviously my mental health is always a work in process and I’m always trying to find new ways of just making it better basically. And quite a few years ago now, I started ketamine treatment.

‘As someone whose never taken a drug before, it was terrifying. I’ve never had that feeling of completely letting go, I think I’ve realised control is a big thing for me, and that is fully out of control – like I don’t even like being really drunk.

‘And so I started it a few years ago and that was quite a big deal for me. It’s just the only thing that really helps me long term.’

Describing how the treatment worked for her, she said: ‘It’s very good at bringing things up that maybe in the past you have pushed down or not acknowledged. Or it brings up things you didn’t think were bothering you that much, and then you say it and you’re like “Oh wow, okay.”

‘But it also helps with the neuropathways. So for me it’s like I have a wall in between my neuropathways, so they can’t meet and attach and with ketamine it builds new ones around that wall.

‘So it’s not just helpful in that moment while you’re having the treatment, it’s long term and it rebuilds those for you and I really noticed a difference long term.’

But while Frankie was full of praise ketamine therapy, she admitted that she was ‘annoyed’ by the fact that it is still very inaccessible, due to it not being widely available and very expensive. 

She said: ‘The annoying thing about it, is for me it’s it’s quite life-changing, but it’s not readily available and it’s really f***ing expensive. It annoys me because it could help so many people. 

‘Some people have it and they never need to have it again, or they don’t need to take antidepressants, just so many positive effects from it.’

Ketamine, also known as Vitamin K, Special K or Ket, increases levels of a glutamate in the brain, a neurotransmitter crucial to mood regulation, learning, memory, and information processing.

Ketamine therapy works by taking an extremely low dose of the drug, to provoke its glutamate boosting effects, and then working through issues with a trained psychotherapist.

By taking the drug, a patient opens up emotionally and becomes more receptive to therapy, a concept known as psychedelic medicine.

The treatment has attracted high-profile endorsements from the likes of celebrities like of Sharon Osborne, Chrissy Teigen and Elon Musk.

Ketamine is being offered in Britain as infusions to treat depression and anxiety at private psychotherapy clinics around the country – and even on the NHS.