Love Island 2018 contestant Alex Miller has revealed that he contemplated suicide, after he found himself in a “dark place” following his appearance on the show.
The Essex native spoke out about his experience, after fellow Love Island star Mike Thalassitis took his own life over the weekend.
Speaking to Lizzie Cundy and Stephen Leng on Access All Areas, Alex said: “I did go through a dark patch where I would look at bridges and think ‘Yeah, I could drive into that’.”
“I was in a dark place [after the show]. It was winter time, there was a lot of factors coming up, knowing that everything was sort of coming to an end like getting back into the old routine in the job.”
Following the news of Mike’s death, Love Island bosses came under fire for not offering enough support for contestants after the show.
However, Alex has since jumped to their defence, and revealed how one of the show’s producers reached out to him on Instagram when he was feeling low.
He said: “I had a little rant on Instagram. I went through a bit of a dark patch and luckily one of the producers follow me on Instagram saw the rant got in touch with me and put me back in touch with a psychiatrist.”
“Looking back, all I needed to do was be forward and go talk to them,” he said. “I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, but after having ranted after answering a fans questions and speaking to the Love Island psychiatrist, it got me through it and gave me a plan on how to take my life forward and now we’re here. We’re all good!”
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Further defending the show’s producers, Alex insisted that it’s “impossible” for them to “keep chasing” contestants – because there’s so many of them.
The news comes after Love Island bosses announced their plans to offer future contestants therapy and pre-show training.
Programme executives carried out a review six months ago, and said, “This review has led us to extend our support processes to offer therapy to all Islanders and not only those that reach out to us.”
“And we will be delivering bespoke training to all future Islanders to include social media and financial management. The key focus will be for us to no longer be reliant on the islanders asking us for support but for us to proactively check in with them on a regular basis.”
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