Actress Reveals She Spent 5 Weeks in Mental Health Facility After Hitting ‘Absolute Rock Bottom’

Coronation Street star Lucy Fallon is opening up about her mental health nearly six years after hitting “absolute rock bottom.”

Fallon, who plays Bethany Platt on the ITV soap, revealed on Sunday’s episode of the Secure the Insecure podcast that she spent five weeks in a psychiatric hospital after suffering a mental health crisis amid the COVID-19 lockdowns, which came shortly after her first exit from Coronation Street.

“‘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,” said the actress, who reprised her role on the daytime drama in 2023. “I was just at the absolute rock bottom that I’ve ever, ever felt. And I really, really, really struggled.”

After a “really bad batch of mental health” towards the end of 2020, Fallon said she ended up being admitted to a private psychiatric hospital, as she “couldn’t see a way out of feeling how [she] was feeling.”

“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,’” she recalled. “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.”

While it felt “a bit alien” and “strange” to be in the hospital at first, Fallon eventually “got to grips with it,” and ended up appreciating her experience, which resulted in her being placed on medication. Leaving the facility was difficult, she admitted, as she moved back in with her parents temporarily and took “a while to adjust.”

Looking back, Fallon said, “It seems like a completely different life,” explaining, “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.”

Meeting her now-fiancé, soccer player Ryan Ledson, 28, helped Fallon find a new start in life, and the two are now parents to son Sonny, 3, and daughter Nancy, 13 months.

“I just accepted that, that was a blip in my mental health and in my own journey,” she said. “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.”

Fallon struggled once again with her mental health in early 2022 after suffering a miscarriage, but welcoming her firstborn son the following year helped her reframe the loss. “If that hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t have Sonny,” she shared. “Even though it was horrendous, it almost showed me how much I wanted that to be the next chapter in my life.”

Now, Fallon said she’s in a better place than ever, although she wouldn’t say she wakes up “every morning with a spring in [her] step.”

“Even though I’m so appreciative, I get overwhelmed. Sometimes I’ll wake up and I’ll think, oh my god, how am I supposed to look after two children all day? I’m scared, even though they’re my children,” she admitted, adding, “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.”