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Caroline Flack was told she may have had bipolar disorder just weeks before her death.
Her mother, Christine, has revealed the former Love Island star—who tragically took her own life in 2019—was given the potential diagnosis in one of her last visits to the doctor.
Bipolar disorder is a mental health condition that can cause extreme mood swings from mania to depression.
Opening up about her daughter’s mental health, Christine told The Sun, “Carrie suffered for a long while, but never showed it because her outgoing personality covered everything. Mainly she was happy, and funny, and brilliant. She just had these terrific down times – and not many people saw those down times.
‘That was the thing; she hid it. The last doctor she saw thought she may have had bipolar. And that’s what I always thought. It was just constant highs, all of a sudden, then the lows.”
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Having always been seen as the bubbly and fun TV presenter, fronting shows like The X Factor and Love Island, Caroline was terrified of people seeing the “dark side”.
“She was just known as this happy-go-lucky girl; she was petrified of people seeing her dark side, and thinking she was ‘mental,’ Christine explained.
“The thing that really upset her was the phrase, ‘you’re mental’. Saying that to someone who’s got mental health [problems] is the worst thing in the world you can say. It’s weaponised.”
Laura Whitmore stepped into Caroline’s shoes and has since fronted Love Island. But Caroline’s mother admitted she can’t watch the show since her death.
She said, “I watched Love Island because Carrie was in it. Now, it’s horrible when the advert comes up and the girl that’s taken her place is all in almost the same dress, in almost the same pose.”
Caroline’s nearest and dearest marked the anniversary of her death earlier this year with an emotional documentary, Caroline Flack: Her Life and Death. In which her famous friends, including Olly Murs, paid tribute to the late star.
Speaking on the Channel 4 documentary, he said, “I just know that my heart breaks every time I think of Caz and think of what she would’ve had to have gone through to take her own life and that’s going to hurt for a long time because we got on so well – we were great together.”
