{"id":276237,"date":"2021-01-20T11:05:31","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T11:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/anthea-turners-sister-wendy-reveals-how-she-found-a-way-out-of-her-despair\/"},"modified":"2021-01-20T11:05:31","modified_gmt":"2021-01-20T11:05:31","slug":"anthea-turners-sister-wendy-reveals-how-she-found-a-way-out-of-her-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/healthmedicinet.com\/i\/anthea-turners-sister-wendy-reveals-how-she-found-a-way-out-of-her-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthea Turner’s sister Wendy reveals how she found a way out of her despair\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anxiety and depression<\/a> have been part of TV presenter Wendy Turner-Webster\u2019s life for just about as long as she can remember.<\/p>\n

Money, work and relationship problems have triggered periods of intense anxiety since her late teens, but she\u2019s learned to live with that.<\/p>\n

Her depression, however, which first hit during childhood, has only lately been eased by psychotherapy, after years of relying on medication.<\/p>\n

In those intervening years, there have been periods when 53-year-old Wendy, younger sister of TV presenter Anthea Turner, has felt so overwhelmed that she\u2019s contemplated taking her own life.<\/p>\n

\"\u2018I\u2019ve \"\u2018I\u2019ve <\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve lent on Gary tremendously down the years,\u2019 says Wendy. \u2018I always say I\u2019d be long dead without his love and support.\u2019 The pair are pictured together above<\/p>\n

\u2018There was a time, two or three years ago, when I wouldn\u2019t leave the house because I didn\u2019t want the temptation of getting too close to the railway line,\u2019 she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018But contemplating suicide is different from attempting it. I\u2019ve always come back to the point where I could never do that to my husband Gary, the children and my parents.<\/p>\n

\u2018That said, I\u2019ve denied myself the escape route, if you like, of ending this debilitating depression. It leaves you feeling trapped.\u2019<\/p>\n

Wendy has two sons \u2014 Jack, 21, and Freddie, 17 \u2014 by actor Gary Webster, 56, best known for replacing Dennis Waterman as George Cole\u2019s sidekick in Minder and more recently as a regular in the Channel 5 soap, Family Affairs.<\/p>\n

\"Wendy \"Wendy <\/p>\n

Wendy has decided to speak out about her experiences as she and Gary have become ambassadors for a charity, Silence of Suicide, which is dedicated to breaking the taboo of the deep-seated depression that can lead to someone taking their own life<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ve lent on Gary tremendously down the years,\u2019 says Wendy. \u2018I always say I\u2019d be long dead without his love and support.\u2019<\/p>\n

The number of people experiencing mental health issues has risen sharply since the start of the pandemic, according to a Public Health England survey reported this week. It found that 56 per cent of people said their mental health had declined since March last year, with 48 per cent now feeling anxious and 46 per cent suffering with low mood.<\/p>\n

Wendy has decided to speak out about her experiences as she and Gary have become ambassadors for a charity, Silence of Suicide, which is dedicated to breaking the taboo of the deep-seated depression that can lead to someone taking their own life.<\/p>\n

It was set up in 2015 by Michael Mansfield QC, following the suicide of his daughter Anna, together with his third wife, Yvette Greenway, who had lost a friend to suicide.<\/p>\n

For many years, Wendy felt too embarrassed to discuss her deep, bleak periods of depression. One such wave hit in 2017 as her 50th birthday approached.<\/p>\n

\u2018I despaired at the thought that life looked like it was never going to be better than this,\u2019 says Wendy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018I became increasingly preoccupied with thoughts questioning why I was on the planet. I was overwhelmed with waves of negativity.\u2019<\/p>\n

She was already on the antidepressant sertraline, which she\u2019d first been prescribed in the 1990s. Over time, her doctor gradually increased the dose, from 50mg daily to 200mg, the maximum permitted.<\/p>\n

But that was not enough to halt the depressive periods altogether \u2014 and a filming job last summer became Wendy\u2019s most recent tipping point into severe depression.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She was working with a charity on an undercover investigation into a pig farm and the conditions in which the animals were kept.<\/p>\n

\u2018In the dead of night, we filmed inside a crowded hangar housing 8,000 pigs where there was probably only room \u2014 and food \u2014 for half that number,\u2019 says Wendy. \u2018I\u2019d never seen anything like it in my life.\u2019<\/p>\n

She cried more or less non-stop for days after, she says.<\/p>\n

\u2018I became so depressed it was as if my body had shut down. I was in a state of semi-paralysis and took to my bed for days.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"Her \"Her <\/p>\n

Her depression, however, which first hit during childhood, has only lately been eased by psychotherapy, after years of relying on medication. In those intervening years, there have been periods when 53-year-old Wendy, younger sister of TV presenter Anthea Turner, has felt so overwhelmed that she\u2019s contemplated taking her own life. The pair are pictured together above<\/p>\n

Her GP referred her to the local mental health service for counselling. Even so, Wendy had no expectation that anything useful could be done for her.<\/p>\n

\u2018I was sceptical,\u2019 she says. \u2018What good could counselling achieve? How could words make any difference to my ingrained depression? I was more or less reconciled to the fact that this was what I was destined to feel like for the rest of my life.\u2019<\/p>\n

She sobbed her way through an initial assessment (by phone because of the pandemic), at the end of which she was told she had \u2018severe existential depression\u2019. In layman\u2019s terms, it translates as life having no meaning; of hopelessness.<\/p>\n

\u2018While I was quite shocked by the diagnosis, because it was more deep-seated than standard depression, I was also quite relieved,\u2019 says Wendy. \u2018Now it had a name, I could embark on how to deal with it.\u2019<\/p>\n

She was also told that she\u2019d benefit from a three-month course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which aims to improve mental health by challenging and changing unhelpful thoughts and beliefs.<\/p>\n

Wendy waited three months before she was assigned an NHS counsellor. In November, she began her weekly one-hour telephone sessions.<\/p>\n

Now, after eight sessions, she says she is amazed by how helpful they\u2019re proving to be, because they\u2019re training her to keep calm and analyse her feelings rather than give up in despair.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m lucky that I always speak to the same woman,\u2019 she says. \u2018You\u2019re baring your soul and I couldn\u2019t have done that with a succession of counsellors.<\/p>\n

\u2018I have to do homework every week \u2014 reading and written exercises where I record my thoughts on a daily basis \u2014 to train myself to think in a different way. I can only say that it\u2019s been a revelation.\u2019<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not been plain sailing. Three weeks into her course, she suffered a full-blown panic attack about her finances.<\/p>\n

The family\u2019s fragile fortunes have not helped Wendy\u2019s mental health over the years.<\/p>\n

The family now live in a rented house in West London but, at one stage, with a credit rating so poor they couldn\u2019t provide a guaranteed lump sum to a prospective landlord, they had to live in a Travelodge hotel.<\/p>\n