FORMER Strictly Come Dancing star Karen Hardy has spoken of the postnatal depression that descended on her about four months after giving birth to her only child.

The 39-year-old, who grew up in Bournemouth, spoke after cutting the ribbon at the official opening of Florence House, the first NHS mother and baby unit in the south west for treating new mothers suffering from postnatal depression.

The risk of a woman suffering a serious mental illness is greater in the three months after having a baby than at any other time in her life. More than 10 per cent of new mothers suffer an episode of depression.

Although most women with postnatal depression can be helped in the community, a few will need to become inpatients.

Dorset HeathCare Trust’s new facility means they can be treated while being supported to bond with their babies.

Karen, who was accompanied by her mother Anne, said she returned to work eight weeks after the arrival of her son Callum, now five.

The depression came out of the blue.

“At the time, I didn’t know what it was. It was the most awful experience, because anybody that knows me knows I am full of life; the most happy optimist in the world. As soon as I started feeling unhappy, I thought: ‘Why am I feeling like this? I don’t think sad things’,” she recalled.

“I started thinking life was so bad. I was sitting at the dining table with my husband (fellow dance professional Conrad Murray from New Zealand) and his mum. I was slouching over, there was food in front of me, but I couldn’t speak and I didn’t want to eat.

“All I had was black around me. I was constantly crying. I didn’t want to be near my son, although I was breastfeeding at the time. I started thinking awful things. I couldn’t see any colours.

“I’m incredibly close to my husband – we’ve been together for 15 years and our relationship is as though we married yesterday – but I couldn’t speak to him or my family. I suddenly wanted to be on my own.”

She added: “I was lucky I was in New Zealand. I confided in a friend of the family.

“We just sat and talked, had coffee and went for walks.

“I think the fresh air and the calmness helped.”

Karen, who learnt to dance in Bournemouth, admits that she sets herself the highest standards.

As a child and young woman, she overcame three bouts of a rare form of ear cancer, which left her partially deaf, but she achieved top honours before retiring from competitive dancing.

Six years later, she went back into training to join 2005’s third series of Strictly Come Dancing.

She and Mark Ramprakash won the competition the following year. She quit in 2008 to concentrate on her London dance studio and her family, but would be a popular choice for the judging panel.