Bake Off star Nadiya Hussain didn’t get help for anxiety out of fear children would be taken away

THE Great British Bake Off 2015 winner Nadiya Hussain has revealed that she did not seek help for anxiety fearing she would lose her children.

Hussain hs three children -- sons Musa, Dawud and daughter Maryam -- with husband Abdal.

She has opened up about her battle with mental health issues, especially anxiety, in a BBC One documentary.

Talking of anxiety she said: "Some days it feels like the monster is so big and so huge and I can’t do anything because it’s so big. I can’t function, I can’t move.’

To deal with her illness, Hussain went to see a psychologist in Oxford, where she confessed she refrained from getting help because feared her children would be taken away.

"The only thing that really stopped me ever seeing a professional was the thought that somebody would say, 'You’re crazy', tie me up, stick me in a white van and take my children away."

The documentary also shows Hussain recalling the instances she was abused in school for "being dark."

"They would wait in corners and pull chunks of my hair out until it was bleeding and they slammed my fingers in doors and all of my nails eventually fell out because they were all black and blue.

"I think it was my last year of school and they flushed my head down the toilet."

She always feared she would drown. "I still have that memory of the water going up my nose and knowing that if they don’t pull me up now I am going to drown with my head in this toilet."

"And they eventually stopped and they left me. And I hid under the sink and I had a panic attack.

She added: "If I could erase one memory then I would take that memory out of my head."