Huw Edwards has spoken publicly in past of 20-year struggle with mental health

Newsreader Huw Edwards has spoken publicly in the past about his mental health problems, describing how his depression and anxiety had left him unable to get out of bed at times.

The Welsh journalist and broadcaster, who has been named as the BBC presenter facing allegations over payments for sexually explicit images, has been “suffering from serious mental health issues”, according to his wife Vicky Flind.

She said that he was now “receiving in-patient hospital care where he will stay for the foreseeable future”.

The 61-year-old told Men’s Health UK in May 2022 that his depression included anxiety that tended to “hit” him “in a strong wave and then go away”.

Suspended

Edwards, who has been suspended by the public service broadcaster where he has worked since 1984, also revealed in a documentary that he had experienced bouts of depression since 2002 which could leave him “bedridden”.

Speaking to mental health campaigner and columnist Alastair Campbell as part of the Men’s Health UK Talking Heads interview series, he said: “I’m pretty clear that I have suffered – and do suffer – from depression.

“It’s not anxiety, although it includes anxiety, but it tends to hit me in a strong wave and then go away … I think at least I now know when I’m going to enter a phase like that.

“Your mind goes into a place where you don’t want to do anything. You can’t make any decisions.

“Things that you usually enjoy, you dread. You come into work and obviously you do a professional job, but you’re kind of pushing your way through it.

“And, of course, if it’s very bad – as it has been a few times over the course of 20 years – you can’t work. During the worst one I had, I couldn’t get out of bed.”