Coronation Street star Lucy Fallon has opened up on a mental health crisis that caused her to spend five weeks in an inpatient psychiatric hospital in 2020.

The soap star, known for the role of Bethany Platt on Corrie, got candid about hitting “the absolute rock bottom” and discussed how she managed to get better.

“From quite young, I’ve always struggled. I’ve always been quite insecure,” Lucy said on the Secure the Insecure podcast.

“That got worse when we went through lockdown because I left Corrie and I wasn’t really getting any work,” she continued, adding that she was “at the absolute rock bottom that I’ve ever, ever felt”.

“And I really, really, really struggled,” she said.

Lucy explained her loved ones urged her to check into The Priory, a private mental psychiatric hospital in south-west London.

“I had a really bad batch of mental health towards the end of 2020, and I ended up being in The Priory for about five weeks because my mental health was so bad. I couldn’t see a way out of feeling how I was feeling,” she recalled.

“I ended up having to go to hospital, and it was from that point that other people were involved – my mum and my sisters and people that I’d worked with before,” she added.

Prompted by those around her, Lucy remembers now she wasn’t totally onboard with being at The Priory for the first few weeks.

“It almost felt like other people, other factors, were telling me, ‘Right, you need some serious help now. It’s gone a bit too far’. I really didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to go and I even remember getting there. I really, really did not want to go in,” she said.

“At first, I didn’t feel like I was bad enough to be there. It almost felt like this just feels a bit alien and a bit strange, like, I don’t know why I’m here.

“After a few weeks of being there, I was like, okay. I got to grips with it. And actually after a week of being there, I liked it. I felt quite safe. I met quite a lot of people there who I sometimes still keep in contact with now.”

While being at the hospital felt alienating at first, leaving the facility felt equally “strange”, the soap star explained.

“Coming out and being in the real world and just having to carry on felt strange. But I also had a really good support system around me,” she said, explaining she was placed on medication and moved back in with her parents upon leaving The Priory.

Since then, Lucy has returned to Corrie in December 2023, come off medication and met her fiancé, footballer Ryan Ledson, on dating app Raya. The couple, who suffered a miscarriage in early 2022, share two children, Sonny Jude and Nancy.

“I feel like that was a totally different version of me,” Lucy reflected on her experience at The Priory.

“And I’ve been lucky enough to say that I did manage to get myself out of it, because I know for so many people that’s not the reality and you can stay on that level and it’s really hard to get out of feeling like that.”