In my darkest hours went to some terrible places in my head...but I would not want my mother to suffer I the agony of losing a second child to suicide

SHIRLEY Ballas has opened up for the first time about having suicidal thoughts while battling depression.

- BY TOM BRYANT

The 64-year-old Strictly Come Dancing judge admitted that she found herself "heading down the same route" as her brother David, who tragically took his own life in 2003, aged 44.

Writing in her new memoir Best Foot Forward, Shirley says: "I was anxious, depressed and desolate. I thought I was losing the plot. In my darkest hours I went to some terrible places in my head and while I hate to use the word suicidal, those thoughts crossed my mind.

"I could never have gone through with it because I wouldn't want my mother to suffer the agony of losing a second child to suicide but there were times I thought I'd be better off dead, because the way I was living felt so hideous." Shirley said that her mental health suffered while going through the menopause in her 50s and likened it to "plummeting into a black hole you can't climb up from".

She added: "You're scratching away at the sides, trying and fighting to scramble your way up but never quite managing before you fall back down again." The Strictly star admits she used booze to try to numb the pain. She writes: "I'd been trying to manage the 'situation' myself with antidepressants, sleeping tablets. more medication to wake myself up and, I have to say this, alcohol.