‘Coronation Street’s Sarah Platt is to be admitted to a mental health unit.
The mother-of-two – portrayed by Tina O’Brien – starts to suffer from psychotic episodes after the body of her abusive ex-boyfriend Callum Logan (Sean Ward), the father of her youngest child, is discovered under the concrete of her mother Gail’s (Helen Worth) granny annex.
Tina explained: "The body being discovered is so huge that she can’t process it very well …
"… She’s trying really hard to keep it together but things get said to her accidentally that make her disillusioned, she’s separated from reality really. It’s like post-traumatic stress, she has these psychotic episodes.
"There’s a scene where the ambulance arrives for her and those around her say to the paramedics, ‘She’s recently had a baby, she’s not been sleeping very well and there’s recently been a body discovered in her house’, so the paramedics are like, ‘Woah, OK! We’ll take you.’ "
In order to prepare for the scenes, the 32-year-old actress has been meeting with mothers from Wythenshawe Hospital, who are being treated for psychotic episodes.
She said: "I’ve been really fortunate that I’ve had a lot of chats with people at the mother and baby unit at Wythenshawe Hospital who have all had psychotic episodes, so they have been really helpful letting me know about body language, symptoms and things like that.
"It’s been really interesting to understand the headspace of someone going through some form of mental torment."
When asked how she copes with filming such emotional scenes, she told website SoapSquawk: "There are days when the scenes have been very heavy going and it’s not a nice place to put your head in, I’d be lying if I said I had found it easy, I haven’t, it’s easily the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
"But it isn’t real, at the end of the day I can have a nice shower, go for a run or eat some chocolate, as long as I don’t take it home with me, it’s fine."
Coronation Street’s Sarah Platt to be admitted to mental health unit
