Gail Porter reveals nightmare of being held in a psychiatric hospital

FORMER model and TV presenter Gail Porter has spoken for the first time about being sectioned after suffering crippling depression four months ago.

The mental welfare of the 40-year-old was deemed so unstable she was placed under a 28-day order, forcing her into a psychiatric hospital to undergo treatment.

Keen to highlight the treatment of depression in Britain, Porter said she only received the care she needed by finally opting for a 285 a night rehabilitation clinic in Thailand.

The mother of one said she had now turned a corner but was still shaken and emotional about the experience.

"I want to break down some of the stigma associated with mental illness," she said. "I'm not ashamed about what happened to me and I think I have a responsibility to talk about my experience in an open way.

"I laid down in bed the first evening and rocked back and forth, sobbing all night long.

"A nurse sat outside my room all night because I was deemed at risk of harming myself.

"The worst part about being sectioned was the lack of structure.

"There was no treatment programme - we were just locked in the unit and basically forgotten about.

"When you are suffering from depression as badly as I was, you genuinely believe you will never come out of a place like that.

"It felt as if I was in the film One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. I had been forced into this place with some very, very ill people and we were left to our own devices and to fend for ourselves.l

"I had no idea how long I had been in there because each day followed exactly the same pattern as the last."

Educated at Portobello High School, Porter quickly rose to fame, as a television presenter, fronting shows such as Top Of The Pops, Channel 4's The Big Breakfast and the BBC's Live & Kicking.

She married musician Dan Hipgrave in 2001 and had a daughter, Honey, now aged eight.

But in 2003, she tried to kill herself, suffering from post-natal depression, divorcing the next year before experiencing hair loss.

On 22 April this year, Porter crouched under a tree on London's Hampstead Heath and sent a text message to her boyfriend that read: "I can't carry on. I feel suicidal."

Admitted to the Royal Free Hospital under police guard, doctors sectioned her under the Mental Health Act for 28 days at The Grove Clinic. He said: "Being told I couldn't leave the hospital was like a nightmare. I'd heard of people being sectioned and I thought I knew what it meant, but I thought it was what happened to crazy people, not people such as me.

"It seemed to me that the nurses didn't really know what to do with us so it was easier to give us lots of drugs so we were calm and quiet.

"I kept myself to myself but there were some very ill people in there. The woman in the room next to mine would get up at 3am and flush the toilet in her room for three hours and talk into the cistern. She said it was her contact to God."At the end of July, she flew to Thailand for a two-week programme at the Chiang Mai clinic and returned last week.

She added: "But it seems ridiculous that I had to go to Thailand to get better treatment than I received in a hospital ten minutes from my house."