My parents put me in foster care and I’ve been pushed to the brink of suicide, says James Arthur
WITH a sell-out crowd of 2,500 adoring fans in Madrid in 2020, James Arthur should have felt on top of the world.
Instead the former X Factor star, 34, suffered a harrowing panic attack that left him convinced he was going to die and led to the cancellation of his European tour.
It was the wake-up call which forced him to confront a lifetime of mental illness that has, at times, driven him to the brink of suicide.
And it was partly triggered by being put into care by his parents Shirley and Neil at 14.
Having abandoned his life in Surrey to move back to his hometown of Redcar, North Yorkshire, James is now on a mission to confront his past and mend the fragile relationship with his family.
In a powerful new documentary, James reveals he moved back to his hometown after finding it hard to settle in London and Surrey, despite living in a series of luxurious houses.
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He says: “I’ve moved seven or eight times which is indicative of how unsettled I feel,” he says.
“I am in a beautiful house with everything I need but I feel like I’m living in an Airbnb. I felt more and more isolated.
“I don’t fit in. I feel I might get closer to who I am with people who knew the weird little ADHD kid I was.
“I’ve battled with my mental health for decades.
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“At times, depression and anxiety overwhelm me. I’ve tried everything — antidepressants, therapy, exercise.
“But I decided that to tackle my mental health issues, I had to start by going back to my hometown to revisit my past, and the separation from my parents.”
‘I f***ed up bad’
He is fronting BBC documentary James Arthur: Out Of Our Minds, which sees him open up to his mum and dad about his “traumatic” teenage years, when his depression and anxiety were so bad he could not leave his squalid bedsit.
His then-girlfriend Jessica Grist sobs on camera as she recalls a night when she lay outside their bedroom begging the suicidal singer to unlock the door until the early hours.
She says: “It was horrible how helpless I felt. I didn’t know how to help him. I felt so alone. I felt like I had the pressure of keeping him alive on my shoulders.”
James’s mum, former model Shirley, split from delivery driver Neil when their son was two, and they both remarried a year later.
Stepdad Ronnie Rafferty, a computer engineer, moved the family to Bahrain when James was nine.
Their four years there was an “amazing lifestyle” for him and his sister, who “had crisps and fizzy drinks on a tap” and swam all day.
But without warning, the family suddenly moved home when James was 13 and Ronnie “disappeared” from their lives, leaving Shirley alone with four kids.
With dad Neil also wrapped up in his new marriage and two young children, James began to spend less time at home, wandering the streets to get away.
At 14, his parents were called to an emergency social worker meeting where his world fell apart as they admitted they could not cope, and he was sent to live with a foster family.
James says: “My mum was going through mental health issues and she was looking to Dad to step up. I felt pretty hopeless.
“I watched both my parents decide to say, ‘He can’t live with us’.
“I was a kid and actually I just needed somebody to put an arm around me. I’ll never forget that day.
“I remember that drive to the foster carer and how scary it was. I used to cry at night — it felt like the worst situation I could be in.
“I hadn’t even done anything really. I’d just been a little bit disruptive at school.
“I resented them so much and have carried that situation, and how it all played out, for the rest of my life.”
James says he did not tell his friends he was in foster care for two years because he was ashamed of it.
For years he bottled his feelings and his mental health “spiralled”.
When he left foster care aged 19 he had no one to turn to and found a tiny bedsit in the seaside district of Saltburn, North Yorkshire, next door to a drug dealer.
Jobless, broke and crippled with anxiety, he would not leave the flat for days on end and spent his time sleeping, eventually being prescribed antidepressants by his GP.
But in 2012, having run out of money for the electricity, he rang his mum and asked for a fiver — which she lent him on condition he went to The X Factor auditions taking place in Middlesbrough.
When he got through to the televised show, his parents stepped up to support him and an emotional James was seen telling the audience that it was the first time they all had been together for 22 years.
But the finals took a huge toll on James, who stopped taking his antidepressants before entering.
He says: “I went into a process that was super-intense but I hadn’t really addressed the deep trauma.
“It was always going to come back and haunt me. I came directly off stage and started having palpitations — all the symptoms of an impending heart attack.
“I can’t describe the terror I felt. I thought I was dying.
“An ambulance was called and the doctors said I shouldn’t have come off the antidepressants, so I went back on them.”
After winning the talent show in December 2012, James’ debut single Impossible shot to number one and became the fastest-selling winner’s track of all time.
But after a second hit single and self-titled album which reached Number 2 in the charts, James’s behaviour got out of control.
Controversy over a homophobic slur on Twitter sparked online spats with comedians Frankie Boyle and Matt Lucas, and a fallout with Simon Cowell over a mixtape which glorified violence saw him dropped from the mogul’s record label Syco.
James says: “I was the most famous person in the country out of nowhere and I thought, ‘What’s going to ruin this?’ Sure enough it was me.
“I was taking antidepressants, smoking a lot of cannabis and drinking, partying. I fed up bad and I’m sorry for that, I was a fool.”
Out in the wilderness for four years, the singer suffered anxiety attacks “every day” and sank further into drug and drink addiction.
His parents tell the documentary they were “shut out” as he refused to answer their calls.
He relied instead on Jess, a former dancer he met on The X Factor, who lost her dad to suicide when she was 14.
She reveals tearfully: “There have been times when I was very concerned James would do the same as what my dad did.”
In 2016, the singer’s life was on the up again after his single Say You Won’t Let Go rocketed to the top of the charts.
He re-signed with Syco and managed to overcome his addictions, taking up hiking to boost his mood.
But as his breakdown in Madrid proved, mental illness was never far away.
‘Thread of hope’
He admits he still “hits these walls in my life when I’m overcome by depression”.
Speaking to his therapist on the show, he says he has now reached a point where he has to mend fences with Shirley and Neil.
He says: “At one time I felt a lot of resentment towards my parents and I did everything I could to keep them away.
“Now I’m back, I can see the opportunity to get to know them again and talk to them about the uncomfortable stuff.
“We’ve not gone there fully. I need to talk to my dad.
“With Mum, I don’t know if I’ve ever got closure from her — to hear her say ‘sorry’ without hearing a ‘but’.”
In a frank talk, James tells dad Neil that being sent away at 14 made him feel he wasn’t good enough.
Neil admits: “I’ve got a lot of regrets about that time in your life. I can only apologise to you for all that. I should have done more.”
In a moving chat with Shirley, James tells her: “I felt like no one had my back.
“I was a young, angry man thinking, ‘how can my parents let me go into care?’. ”
Shirley tells him she struggled with four kids and a “broken heart” but adds: “It wasn’t my doing. I was going through a nervous breakdown.
“It’s the biggest heartbreak of my life that you went through that, because I absolutely adore you.”
James also meets other sufferers including the inspirational football team Redcar CF, who are part of the No Substitute For Good Mental Health initiative, with members who all live with problems themselves.
James says: “What I’ve learned is nothing is perfect, but the more you talk, the better things get.
“Mental health is complex and everyone is different. But for me, personally, it’s been about confronting my past.
“Just talking to my dad and my mum has helped me draw a line under the pain of the past and simply move on.
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“Bit by bit I’ve put myself together. I’ve found a thread of hope and a foundation to build upon.”
- James Arthur: Out Of Our Minds airs on BBC Three at 9pm on November 13.