West End star Ruthie Henshall has revealed that she ended up terrified about her own children’s mental health after seeing three close family members threaten suicide. The singer and actress was heartbroken when her older sister Noel took her own life 18 years ago. But now she has revealed that Noel’s twin sister Susan also attempted suicide and that when they were growing up, their mother talked about ending her life too.

Ruthie said: “Every time my children were down – and they really did have their downs – I was paralysed with this feeling, because my mother had talked about suicide when I was little. She was going to commit suicide – she said that often – my sister Susan tried it, my sister Noel tried it a few times.

“In my house people could do it and then did. For a while there I was absolutely terrified of my children, every time they said, ‘I don’t want to be here’, she told Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast. I felt paralysed and then I would over-try and fix – get them therapy, get them this, get them that – figure out how to fix it, because I’ve got to fix it. People do commit suicide in my world or try.”

The Chicago performer was left heartbroken when her sister Noel took a fatal overdose, aged 49, in 2007 after suffering bouts of depression. As a mother to two daughters, aged 22 and 20, Ruthie said she still felt anger over her sister’s death because the two had been very close as children.

“I still am sad and angry and unresolved with my sister’s suicide,” she said. “As much as I understand that she wasn’t happy and she’s at peace now, I can be really angry with her that she left me, because we were inseparable when I was a little kid. She took me everywhere. She was nine years older than me. Mum was busy, dad was busy – my twin sisters were like surrogate parents in some ways and kept me safe, but especially Noel.”

Ruthie added: “Noel is going to be missed by me for the rest of my life and the thing about suicide is that the person who died is out of pain. Our pain just begins and then you live with that and you bounce things off that.

“I don’t think about it every day, but it comes and hits me at times. Talking about her and the suicide, I find it very difficult not to cry. It never stops being emotional. You never get over it. People tell you it will lessen and the pain doesn’t lessen, it just hits you at times.”

Ruthie grew up in Suffolk with her parents David and Gloria and her older three sisters Noel, Susan and Abigail. She hit the headlines during the pandemic after criticising government lockdown restrictions on care homes, which left families unable to visit their loved ones. Her mother Gloria died in a care home in 2021 aged 88.

Afterwards, Ruthie campaigned for a new law to ensure no elderly or vulnerable people would be left to die alone in a care home again. She is now a passionate advocate for improving care standards.