told Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place podcast<\/a> last week she has “dealt with deep, deep, deep depression in my life”.<\/p>\nShe told her former Radio 1 colleague she decided to leave the station partly because she felt “completely satiated” by the job and didn’t want it to become “a chore”.<\/p>\n
But she went on to say she was suffering from depression in 2023 and took a break “to have a little reset”, before deciding to leave for good.<\/p>\n
Amfo joined Radio 1 in 2015 and took over Cotton’s mid-morning slot the same year, before moving to Annie Mac’s evening show in 2021. Amfo left the station in March 2024.<\/p>\n
She also took part in Strictly Come Dancing in 2020, co-hosted the Brit Awards last year, and is a regular presenter on BBC One’s The One Show.<\/p>\n
She told Cotton her depression had become particularly bad at the start of 2023.<\/p>\n
“Mate, I was in the flipping trenches,” she said. “I think I was burnt out, I wasn’t taking care of myself properly, I think I was a bit sort of overwhelmed by life’s weird – not weird, valid – injustices.<\/p>\n
“I just wasn’t feeling great and I was in a bit of a negative headspace, and yeah I was really, really depressed mid-2023, and I took some time off of radio, and just had to have a little reset. And that’s when I decided I was going to leave my show, actually, at the time.”<\/p>\n
Cotton, who has previously said she left Radio 1 because the job was “ruining her mind”, told Amfo she had also experienced “very, very low mental health in periods”.<\/p>\n
Amfo also spoke about other factors behind her departure from Radio 1 earlier in the interview, saying she was determined not “to resent anything that I do” in her job.<\/p>\n
“I don’t ever want anything to feel like it’s being forced or like it’s a chore. And I wasn’t feeling that way, but I want to be able to listen to music as a fan always, rather than as a business,” she explained.<\/p>\n
“I want to be able to talk to people on a human level, rather than thinking, I’ve got to get that viral interview clip.”<\/p>\n
She quoted a comment that Annie Mac told her when she left. “She was just like, ‘Yeah babe, I’m just ready to do my next thing’.<\/p>\n
“And I think that’s how I felt. I felt so completely satiated by it and I was like, well, I think there’s nothing new for me to do. I could carry on and do it. I could. But I think one thing I learned is just because you can do something doesn’t mean you always should.”<\/p>\n
BBC News used AI to help write the summary at the top of this article. It was edited by BBC journalists. Find out more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former BBC Radio 1 DJ Clara Amfo has spoken about how depression played a part in her decision…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[49,48,84,393,394],"class_list":{"0":"post-69273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-mental-health","12":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}