Nadiya Hussain opens up on suicide, revealing how her mum stopped her

nadiya hussain reveals suicide attempt
(Image credit: Getty)

Nadiya Hussain has opened up on suicide.

The former Great British Bake Off winner has released a new autobiography Finding My Voice, where she opens up about contemplating suicide, revealing how her mum stopped her from going through with it.

Speaking to You magazine about how she was bullied at school as well as being sexually abused as a child by a distant family member, Nadiya said that she remembers hearing about suicide on the TV at ten-year-old, saying, “I can only equate it to a feeling similar to being able to buy a bus ticket.”

“It was, like, ‘What? I can buy this ticket and I can just go and I’d never get bullied again?’”

In an excerpt from her book, Nadiya revealed that she tried to commit suicide one day after school by taking an overdose of tablets.

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However, she said that she was interrupted when she found out that her mother was expecting another baby.

Explaining that she got out a packet of tablets and started to swallow the first one, the Bake Off star wrote, ‘I didn’t know what death was. All I knew was that it meant not living the life I had now – and I didn’t like my life.’

Adding that she ran out of water to swallow the next pill, she wrote, ‘I was excited that I was going to do this. I was not going to get bullied tomorrow, but first I had to go downstairs to get some water.’

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But she then continued that a family occurrence stopped her from carrying on, ‘As I walked across the living room, everyone was huddled around my mum.

‘“Tell them!” Dad said.

‘“Mum’s having another baby!’”.’

After heading back to her room with her full glass of water to carry on her task at hand, Nadiya said that she paused and decided to go through with after the baby was born.

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‘I had to meet this new baby who was either my brother or sister,’ she wrote.

However, after meeting her baby brother she said that she fell so in love with him that she couldn’t go through with taking her life.

‘“I can’t go anywhere,’ she wrote, ‘I have to stay for him. He will need me.”

‘So I stayed. The epitome of a new life in more ways than one.’

Aleesha Badkar
Lifestyle Writer

Aleesha Badkar is a lifestyle writer who specialises in health, beauty - and the royals. After completing her MA in Magazine Journalism at the City, the University of London in 2017, she interned at Women’s Health, Stylist, and Harper’s Bazaar, creating features and news pieces on health, beauty, and fitness, wellbeing, and food. She loves to practice what she preaches in her everyday life with copious amounts of herbal tea, Pilates, and hyaluronic acid.