GMB star shares his heartache that he kept completely hidden from his co-hosts
At first glance, nothing would have seemed untoward for the millions tuning into Good Morning Britain that day. With a bright smile and easy-going nature, Sean Fletcher was once more gently waking up the nation in his own inimitable style. Little did they know that just seconds before going live on air, the same man had taken a deep breath and thought to himself: ‘Just get through this.’
“You have to go on and smile and pretend everything’s great, as no one wants to switch the telly on and have a miserable news presenter,” he says. “But I was basically putting on a mask.” Like the viewers, even his colleagues Susanna Reid, Charlotte Hawkins and Kate Garraway were none the wiser about how their colleague was suffering.
The problems lay at home with his then 14-year-old son, who was suffering with his mental health. “He was unable to do basic things like get out of bed and go to school,” Sean says. The teen was eventually diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a condition where you have recurring thoughts and repetitive behaviours that you cannot control.
“The OCD was telling him that he shouldn’t do those things or something bad would happen,” says Sean. His son was out of school for a year - and at one stage ended up in hospital for six months - but it took the best part of a year even to be seen by the right clinician.
Understandably, it all took a toll on Sean and his wife.
And the brutal early mornings on GMB only made things harder to deal with the turmoil unfolding at home. “I was really struggling...it’s really hard, you’re just tired all the time,” he says. “It’s a bit like when you have a newborn, you can deal with problems when you have sleep, but when you don’t have sleep, the smallest things become big.”
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Sean Fletcher has opened up (Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror) Sean admits that his work on screen suffered. “I look back and I think I’m a much better presenter now I don’t have this struggle that we had at home,” he says. "At the time I was just sort of fighting and just trying to keep your head above water.”
Sean says he felt he couldn’t open up to his GMB colleagues about what he was going through at the time.
“I immediately just clicked into the mode, which was ‘don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it, don’t talk about it’” he admits. “And I didn’t for a long time. I probably didn’t feel a television studio was a safe space. To be fair, I didn’t feel anywhere was a safe space to talk about it, but definitely television.”
He explains a large part of this was due to the stigma attached to mental health, and OCD in particular which can involve extreme thoughts of violence or sex. “You’re sort of embarrassed,” he says. “If he had a broken leg, I’d be bragging about it and talking about it in a completely different way...I felt the stigma that we have in society.”
Sean is opening up as part of our special Men in Mind spin-off podcast series, called Outdoors in Mind. The vital series, part of GO Outdoors and mental health charity Mind’s Hats on for Mind campaign, encourages people to open up about their mental health, as well as the benefits of nature.
Sean spoke openly to the Mirror's Tom Bryant (Adam Gerrard / Daily Mirror)Speaking to me from the banks of the river Thames, near where he lives in south-west London, Sean can now reflect on that period seven years ago with a sense of calm. Through a combination of medication and therapy, his son, now 20, is much better, and is now at university, something which they could never once envisage.
But he is under no illusions just how tough a period it was to get through. And Sean wants to raise awareness of the burden that caring for someone with a mental health condition can have, and the impact on the wider family. “It was almost like the OCD was tearing our family apart,” he says. “It was like a little gremlin sitting on the mantelpiece, making arguments start…making things difficult.”
Throughout it all, he says he was extra mindful of his own mental health. “It’s almost like our son was going down the plughole of mental illness...and we were all going down it as well,” he says “But you’re no good if your mental health goes downhill. You’re no good to anyone, so you do need to look after your own mental health.”
Sean says he managed to do so by keeping fit, often going for runs and walks by the river to try and clear his head. It comes as Mind found that 94 percent of people who took part in outdoor exercise activities said they had felt benefits to their mental health. “It was really crucial to have that time to yourself,” he says.
Understandably, such pressures at home had the potential to put strain on his 24-year marriage, not least as both had busy, full-time jobs. “We were basically a tag team….one of you’s looking after your child and the other one’s out and vice versa,” he says. “Gradually, of course, that puts pressure on any marriage, any partnership, but then you get through it.”
Sean didn't tell his Good Morning Britain co-stars
Sean says “the best thing they ever did” was doing a family therapy course at the hospital his son was in, where they met others going through the same thing. “We met people who were at the end of the tunnel and were saying, ‘It’s going to be all right. Don’t worry. You can get through this,’ and other people who were literally just going into the tunnel struggling. “We were in this dark place, and actually, sharing your stories with other people who are further down the path or behind you is really important.” The youngster was eventually able to go back to school and got the grades needed for University.
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“I was nowhere near as clever as him,” Sean smiles. His son now has the “tools needed” to deal with his condition, and reassuringly, is in a “much better place”. It’s something in the family’s darkest times they never thought would materialise.
“When a mental health issue strikes, you just see that horizon disappearing, and there’s a cloud that comes over it and all those dreams,” he says.
“You probably shouldn’t do that because you probably put loads of pressure on your kids, but we all do as parents, don’t we?
“The message I’d have to anybody who’s in that situation, it doesn’t matter just as long as your child is happy, and you just need to get them better.”
Dropping the now-20-year-old off at university for the first time was understandably quite the moment. “In the car on the way back me and my wife talked about how far he’d come, and the depths that we were at, and it was emotional,” he says. “You wake up every day and you think, ‘phew, where we were, that was awful.’ It makes you cherish the things you have.”
For support about OCD, please go to www.mind.org.uk/OCD
Listen to Sean on Outdoors in Mind, the Brilliant new weekly podcast and the follow-up to Tom Bryant’s hugely popular Men in Mind series. The UK’s best-loved stars, both male and female this time, are joining host Tom to open up about their own mental health journey in the great outdoors. Find us on Apple podcasts or go to podfollow.com/outdoorsinmind. The vital new series supports the mental health charity Mind’s Hats on for Mind campaign, in conjunction with GO Outdoors. Sean is an ambassador for #HatsOnForMind, having designed his own hat and flask, available to purchase online and in-store at partner retailers including GO Outdoors, Blacks, Millets, Naylors and Fishing Republic. 100% of the profits will go to Mind.
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