Singer Jesy Nelson is opening up about her past struggles with mental health and feeling unsupported from her a Little Mix bandmate.
In the docuseries, Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix, which premiered on Prime Video on Friday, February. 13, Nelson shared that she shared with her bandmates, Perrie Edwards, Jade Thirwall, and Leigh-Anne Pinnock, that she was suffering from panic attacks and felt like “no-one cared.”
“I basically just sat everyone down, and I just explained how I was feeling. I just felt like no one cared,” she said in the documentary.
Nelson’s mom, Janice White, recalled noticing her daughter seemed “really down” after talking to her fellow band members.
“She wanted to be on her own quite a lot, and I just got a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. I kept ringing and ringing [her phone], and then I was getting no answer,” White said. “She eventually answered the phone, but she was talking really slurry, and I could hear the phone drop and then I didn’t hear anything else. I knew she had done something.”
Nelson was then hospitalized following this incident. She had planned to leave the banned in 2020 due to her struggles with her mental health.
“I’d been in lockdown, felt that happiness and now I’d been swarmed with this rush of anxiety and insecurities, which I didn’t have when I was at home and in lockdown and I felt safe. I started then having panic attacks again,” Nelson recalled.
Nelson also claimed in the documentary that Edwards, Pinnock, and Thirwall would only speak to her if there was a therapist present.
“I had just come out of hospital, this is when I need you the most,” she said. “I just didn’t feel like they were my sisters. It’s been five years now and every time I think about it, I’m like, ‘Was it them or was it the management?’”
Nelson’s departure from Little Mix was announced in December 2020 and Edwards left the band in the following year.
Jesy Nelson: Life After Little Mix is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
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