Joe Wicks has said he became aware of the scale of the UK’s mental health crisis when he was inundated with messages from fans during lockdown, saying he sometimes spent seven hours a day responding to pleas for help.
The 36-year-old fitness trainer, known as Body Coach, will explore his parental mental health problems in a new documentary, looking at how his mother’s eating disorder and his father’s severe obsessive-compulsive disorder and drug addiction affected him as a child.
Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood, was produced by documentary filmmaker Louis Theroux, who previously revealed that Wicks’ exercise program was one of the things that got him through lockdown.
Wicks told the Radio Times: “After [YouTube series] PE with Joe ended, I realized that it had not only helped people’s physical health, but also their mental health. I wanted to have that conversation.
“When I was a child, I didn’t realize that my parents had mental health issues. I just thought my dad was a drug addict and my mom loved to clean. But I knew he had the ability to share my story and hopefully inspire people.”
The fitness and nutrition specialist revealed that as a child he used exercise to de-stress and avoid the environment at home.
He said: “If I hadn’t exercised, it would have been a nightmare. No one would have been able to control me. PE was the only subject I looked forward to because it helped me focus.”
Wicks revealed that he has received little therapy himself, except for a few family counseling sessions as a child, and that the documentary is the deepest he has delved into his past.
Learning from his experience of being kept in the dark, Wicks hoped the children would be able to stay more informed about their parents’ mental health.
He said: “Millions of parents are experiencing mental health issues, particularly after the lockdown. They are holding back and trying to be brave and happy, but inside they are probably falling apart. When the parents move away, the children become withdrawn.”
Wicks said he discovered the depth of the nation’s mental health problems after being showered with messages from fans during lockdown. He sometimes spent up to seven hours a day responding to the thousands of messages and requests for help that he received.
“Helping people is addictive. When I open my phone and go to Instagram, I’m not just going to see a video of a cat. I’m going to see a DM [direct message] of someone who is in need. That feeling of helping someone is energizing, but it also drains me. It’s overwhelming to take it all in.”
The documentary will air on bbc one on May 16.
