'I WAS ABUSED-I KEPT IT SECRET FOR 29 YEARS'

Actor Joe Tracini reveals the childhood trauma he believes sparked his complex mental health issues

- JEN PHARO

Joe Tracini is an actor, a magician and a best-selling author. He also thinks about ending his life. All the time.

In his new Channel 4 documentary Me And The Voice In My Head, the former Hollyoaks actor reveals his continuing struggle with borderline personality disorder since he was diagnosed 10 years ago and how he’s tried to take his own life six times.

“My emotions are entirely unstable,” says Joe, explaining that the symptoms of BPD include fear of abandonment, distorted self image, explosive anger, mood swings, unstable relationships, paranoia and suicidal thoughts. “I constantly think the worst thing is going to happen and the biggest thing is that I figure out killing myself a lot. It’s quite a difficult thing to explain to somebody who doesn’t have killing himself as an option.”

Joe, 35, whose father is the comedian Joe Pasquale, has tried almost everything to feel better, with varying degrees of success. He finds talking about it helps. “The more I talk about how f****d up I am, the less f****d up I feel,” he says. “Which is f*****g mental.”

There is one thing that Joe has been unable to talk about – until now. In his documentary, Joe is confronting the events that he fears may have sparked his mental illness – he was sexually abused as a young child.

In the documentary he tearfully recalls the abuse, shaking with horror at his ordeal perpetrated by an unnamed man. Until he started filming the documentary, Joe had never told anyone about the abuse.