Denise Welch reveals 1975 rocker son Matt Healy wrote She Lays Down about her depression

Loose Women star Denise Welch has long been open about her more than 30-year battle with her mental health and depression.

And now, the 64-year-old presenter and actress has revealed that her rocker son Matt Healy, 33, actually wrote The 1975 song She Lays Down about her crippling depression. 

Speaking on ITV‘s Loose Women, Denise said she once told Matt that her depression made her ‘lose the ability to love’.

Candid: Denise Welch revealed on Loose Women on Thursday that her 1975 rocker son Matt Healy wrote She Lays Down about her depression. (Pictured together in London back in 2011)

‘I told him when he was older that depression robbed me of the ability of love and I used to lay down on the bedroom floor and pray for the ability to love my children again,’ Denise explained on the show on Thursday.

Denise also recalled some harrowing low points during her battle with depression. 

‘I never tried to take my own life, but there were times when I wanted that to be done, when I was taking him [Matt] to Australia I wished that the plane would come down,’ she said.

‘I told him when he was older that depression robbed me of the ability of love and I used to lay down on the bedroom floor and pray for the ability to love my children again,’ Denise explained

The former Coronation Street star shares sons Matt and actor Louis, 21, with ex-husband and Benidorm star Tom Healy. 

In his lyrics for She Lays Down, Matt sings: ‘She lays down on her bedroom floor, the chemicals that make her laugh, don’t seem to be working anymore.’

 ‘And when I go to sleep it’s when she begins to weep, she’s appalled by not loving me at all, she wears a frown and dressing gown, when she lays down.’

Family: The former Coronation Street star shares sons Matt and actor Louis, 21, with ex-husband and Benidorm star Tom Healy. Pictured in 2015 in Bolton

In June 2020, Denise detailed her three-decade battle with depression on Loose Women.

At the time, Denise admitted that at her lowest she tried to throw herself out of a taxi, describing how post-natal depression, following the birth of her son 1975 singer Matty in 1989, was her first experience of mental health issues. 

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Promoting her new book The Unwelcome Visitor: Depression and How I Survive It, Denise said she wanted to speak publicly about her experiences to help others.

‘Obviously I have no medical knowledge, I’m in no position to tell anyone how to survive it, but if anyone can gain solace from my experience…’ she said.

‘It started when I gave birth to Matty 31 years ago. Prior to that I’d had no episode of depression. I didn’t know the true meaning of depression until I had very severe postnatal depression.’

Health woes: In June 2020, Denise detailed her three-decade battle with depression on Loose Women

She added: ‘Nobody that I could access was talking about it – nobody in the public eye, as it were. There was nothing.’

‘I wasn’t in a fit state to go into a bookstore to find a medical book. Unfortunately for me it opened up a tendency for it and it’s something I’ve lived with for 31 years and it’s why I’ve done the book.’

Denise explained how she was aware of her postnatal depression after a blissful pregnancy with her son: ‘I knew that I had postnatal depression in as much as I’d been a perfectly ‘normal’ blooming woman in pregnancy… I loved it… Everything around us was fine.’

‘And then I was plunged into this black, almost suicidal, depression – so I knew it was post-natal depression.

Speaking about one particular depressive episode, the Loose Women star explained: ‘I’d had a horrible moment where I’d tried to throw myself out of a taxi when I was with my mum. And when people say, ‘Were you trying to end everything?’ I wasn’t. I was trying to stop the pain. Only people who have had severe depression will know how that feels.’

Denise also revealed how her illness affected her work, confessing she didn’t do theatre for 12 years after having a ‘terrible episode of depression in the middle of a show’.

Denise went on to tearfully explain that her ‘darkest moments were at the very beginning,’ when she was trying to understand post-natal depression..

‘The main thing was when I couldn’t love my child and that does affect me… when you have this baby, that you have wanted so badly, and you have no love, because what depression does is it depresses every single emotion, so it’s not striving for happiness, it’s striving for normalcy – it’s striving for the ability to be happy, to be sad, to care, to feel jealous, to feel anger, because with depression you feel nothing’.

‘And that’s why you feel that life can be not worth living, unless you have a family like mine who said every day, ”You will get better”.

For confidential support call the Samaritans on 116123 or visit a local Samaritans branch, see www.samaritans.org for details.

Speaking about one particular depressive episode, the Loose Women star explained: ‘I’d had a horrible moment where I’d tried to throw myself out of a taxi’