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Louise Thomas
Editor
Ben Fogle has shared details of a debilitating mental health “wobble” he suffered last year.
The broadcaster, 50, whose wife Marina recently revealed she had been wrongfully reported to social services for verbally abusing their children, said he has used cognitive behavioural therapy and unspecified medication to help him recover from the “episode”.
Fogle explained his mental health “breakdown” was due in part to “burnout” and that he has since simplified his life in order to to get back to his “calm old self” and heal from the “storm”, which saw him suffer from “crippling paranoia and anxiety”.
Writing on Instagram, Fogle told his followers: “I’m telling you this firstly because I believe as someone who shares my successes it’s important to also share our vulnerabilities. It is not to jump on some trend or for sympathy. It’s because if it happened to me, [it could] happen to you.”
He continued: “But just like a broken bone or a pneumonia ravaged lung or even a flesh eating bug (all of which I have had) we can heal.”
Fogle said mental health struggles don’t “define us” or “make us weak” but instead “prove we are human” and “vulnerable to the pressures of modern life”.
“A mental health trauma should not be a stigma but a reality check for the increasingly complicated world in which we live,” he said.
“What’s helped me is doing less and simplifying my life. Less social media.Less work. Less pressure to be perfect. The results are that I worry less: Stress less, anger less, fixate less.”
The former Countryfile presenter explained how making more time for himself had helped him get “back to reality” and back to “being me”.
He signed off: “Love, peace and simplicity.”
Fogle’s vulnerable post comes shortly after his wife Marina detailed how she had been wrongly accused of verbally abusing their children Ludovic, 15, and Iona, 13.
Writing in The Times, Marina recalled how she had returned from holiday in 2013 to a letter “from social services saying that there had been a report of verbal abuse at our address.”
Her first thought was that the letter had been sent “in error”, but before she had a chance to contact authorities, they came to her home to “have a chat about my children.”
“[Someone] had reported us for supposedly shouting at our children, they said, the kind of sustained verbal abuse that was simply unacceptable,” she explained.
She then asked when the alleged incident took place, and social services told her it was four days ago, which was when the family was out of the country on holiday.
But despite proving their absence with boarding passes, this was not enough to placate the social worker investigating, and Mrs Fogle was questioned in more detail about her children’s home lives.
“My children spent 20 minutes showing off their Lego and toys, after which I was told that clearly there wasn’t an issue and she hoped that I understood why they’d needed to investigate,” she explained.
She added: “My husband, Ben, was so shocked that anyone even knew this was possible, combined with the fact that we are very much not a shouty household, suspected it might have been someone wanting to cause trouble.”
If you have been affected by this article, you can contact the following organisations for support: mind.org.uk, nhs.uk/livewell/mentalhealth, mentalhealth.org.uk.
