Molly Bartrip has not spoken to a psychologist or counsellor in three months. It is the first time in 10 years she has gone that long without it.
The Tottenham Hotspur Women defender (and captain while Beth England recovers from a hip operation) was diagnosed with anorexia at 14, the same age at which she had first been called up by England to join their under-15s squad.
It was only when she was hospitalised, her liver function failing and facing the prospect of being tube-fed, that she realised the need to start fighting.
By her late teens, she had recovered but, when she was 21, her mental health started to dip again. She was a professional footballer by now, playing for Reading, but struggling to get out of bed. She felt drained. Sad.
Why? She didn’t know.
Later diagnosed with severe depression and anxiety, Bartrip spiralled. She was self-harming. She could not see the point of living. At one point, she decided to end it all by driving into the central reservation of the M25. Something stopped her. A voice in her head was telling her not to do it. To just get home.
“It took a long time to get back to accepting that I actually wanted to be alive,” Bartrip says. “It was about my self-worth. My mentality at the time was, ‘Would I affect anybody (if I wasn’t here)?’….
