The Loose Women presenter, who has battled depression for two decades, admitted that she "would have cracked" if she hadn't taken time to recover after winning the show in January.
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In excerpts from her autobiography Starting Over published in The Mirror, Welch claims: "If I hadn't taken a few days off in the weeks after Big Brother and gone to Tenerife, I think I would have cracked.
"'I need a week off, because if I don't have a week off, I'm going to go under', I told my bosses at Loose Women. 'I need to get out of this country; I need to be... away from everything'."
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Welch also explained how she has found "solace in the thought of suicide" since first feeling the "terrible blackness" of depression after the birth of eldest son Matthew in 1989.
"I didn't ever really consider committing suicide, but many people with clinical depression find comfort in thinking of it as an option," she said.
"So although my sense of loyalty is such that I wouldn't do it, the thought was an escape valve."
Welch revealed in an earlier excerpt that estranged husband Tim Healy cheated on her before she met new partner Lincoln Townley, to whom she got engaged last month.
