Episodes
Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood airs Mon 16 May on BBC One
Joe Wicks became a national hero during the first lockdown with his hugely successful PE With Joe workouts. But in the wake of the pandemic, it’s not just the nation’s physical health that concerns him – it’s our mental health.
Many of the thousands of letters and messages that Joe has received since he began his workouts have been from parents, confiding in him about their own mental health struggles and their worries for their children. Unfortunately Joe knows all too well how stressful and confusing it can be when you are a child and your mum and dad aren’t well – and he wants to find out more.
In Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood, Joe opens up on about his mum’s OCD, eating disorders and anxiety, as well as his dad’s heroin addiction and depression. He wants to understand how his family’s illnesses affected him when he was a child and how we can better support kids and families living in similar situations today.
According to the NHS, one in four adults have experienced a mental health problem, and before the pandemic there were 3.7 million children living with a parent who had a moderate or severe mental health condition. Unfortunately, all the data suggests that will only have increased in the years since. But even though, without support, children whose parents have mental illness are more likely to go on to have mental health conditions themselves – there is a chronic lack of support for children in this situation.
To discover more, Joe goes to meet Our Time, the UK’s only charity dedicated to working with children of parents with mental illness. But as Joe explores the issue, he starts to ask questions about both his own childhood and how his early life experiences have affected him as an adult.
Startlingly honest and emotional conversations with his mum, dad and brother, unearth long-suppressed memories and lead Joe to confront how he dealt with his turbulent home life, and how it forged his identity today.
Joe Wicks: Facing My Childhood is a co-production with Open University.
Airdate: Monday 16 May 2022 at 9.00pm on BBC One.