Voice of Experience - Nikki Hayes Interview

It was late 2013, and Nikki Hayes should have been on top of the world. Her SPIN 1038 show thriving, Hayes was also starting a family. “Here I am all happy with my gorgeous fiancé,” the DJ recalls. “I’m absolutely in love with him and we’re getting married next year. I’d just had a beautiful daughter I’d waited all my life for.

“And yet,” she adds, “when she was born, all I could do was cry and I didn’t know why I was so down.” In her mid-30s, mental health issues weren’t new for Nikki. In fact, she’d been expecting the black cloud to return. But post-natal depression can be extremely debilitating. It has always been a taboo subject in Ireland, because of the vested interest people have in pretending the arrival of a baby is always a big success. Caught in a post-natal depressive cycle, however, women have been know to do very destructive things. Sometimes the effect is to destroy marriages. “Apparently it was almost inevitable that I would experience post-natal depression because of my mental health history,” she explains, as her daughter Farrah sleeps nearby. “When she was only six weeks old I was able to go into treatment immediately, because I knew the triggers and my public health nurse was well aware of the fact that I had suffered with depression in the past.”
Now, Hayes wants to help others with similar issues, by sharing her story, which began, aged 16 with anorexia.
“A couple of friends of mine were walking the mini marathon and I was walking it with them. After the mini marathon, they stopped all the training and I continued it. I used to go out for walks with ankle-weights on my ankles. It got to the stage where I was having lettuce, digestive biscuits, Angel Delight and nothing else to eat during the day. It was pretty bad. My energy levels were gone and I ended up getting anaemia.”
On top of that, she was the target of bullying. Hayes says there was one incident that she will never forget.
“A couple of girls got me in the locker room, held me down, and stuffed chocolate in my mouth. They used to call me ‘Anorexic Annie’ and stuff like that. Some of them have tried to talk to me in adult life – I honestly don’t think they realise what they did back then.”
While the focus recently has been on getting reticent young men to open up about depression, young women don’t find it easy to communicate either.
“I actually met one of my best friends now when I was hospitalised. She was in for bulimia and I was in for anorexia. A lot of girls in the wards were dealing with eating disorders as well as depression and all that comes with that. I think girls find it just as hard as guys to talk. The pressure of trying to hide it just became too much – and I tried to take my own life.”
The first time, she overdosed on medication in her bedroom before shouting for her mother. It was a cry for help.
“We’d just found out my dad had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and me and my dad were really close. So there was a lot going on in the family and it was a case of ‘I just can’t deal with this any more’.”
Going to college, she continued to find life tough and she attempted suicide for a second time. Then, when her beloved father eventually died, there was a further downward spiral.
“Every time something big happens in my life, it triggers it.”
Opening up and seeking help was crucial to managing it.
“I had Farrah and so when I felt depressed, I couldn’t allow myself to go on a downward spiral. I had people to live for – and I wanted to get better for them. And so I reached out.”
She implores others in similar situations to do the same.
“If you had a broken leg, would you go around with that broken leg for 16 years?”
Last October she spoke out on TV3’s Time To Talk. Many were surprised to hear someone with such an upbeat on-air personality admit to mental health problems. The truth is that depression knows no barriers.
“For those three or four hours on air, I didn’t have to deal with it. So I think that’s why people were shocked – I basically was two different people. If more people would speak out about it, that would help young people to understand: ‘look at Bressie, he’s singing, look at Nikki, she’s on the radio, look at Brent Pope, he’s on the TV. They all have this but they found a way out of it, they’re doing well now’. There’s an onus on us.”
Following the programme, the broadcaster became a go-to person for advice.
“A friend of mine came to me recently and I was surprised. I didn’t realise they were going through anything. I get a lot emails and DMs on Twitter from people that are struggling with mental health issues. I’m not qualified to counsel them – but I will listen and tell them what I did, what worked for me. Give them numbers of the charities to call. Sometimes that’s all they
need, one person to say: ‘I went
through it’.”

Nikki Hayes presents SPIN Hits from 9.45am each weekday on SPIN 1038