Adele is many things including a Grammy-winning, best-selling recording artist, three-time Billboard Artist of the Year, MBE, mum to five-year-old Angelo, wife and British cultural icon – and now the 30-year-old can claim another title: greatest friend in the world.
The BBC reports Adele was the one who spotted her best friend, Laura Dockrill’s, postpartum illness. “She recognised it in me, I was on the phone FaceTiming her and she was the first one to detect what I might have,” Dockrill said in an interview with Radio 1 Newsbeat.
Dockrill and Adele attended the same high school, The BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, England and despite a few ups and downs in their friendship – their relationship is said to have inspired Adele’s song My Same – they have been tight friends since they were teens.
Following the birth of her son Angelo in 2012, Adele has said she suffered from postpartum depression, and it appears she has been able to use her own experience to help her best friend following the birth of her baby son in February this year. The Skyfall singer spotted that her friend might be suffering from a similar illness, has supported her throughout it and recently posted a heartfelt Instagram message sharing Dockrill’s story.
Dockrill was diagnosed with a condition called postpartum psychosis, which Beyond Blue states is a “rare mental health condition that affects a small number of women (one or two in every 1,000 mothers) in the first days or weeks after childbirth…[it] is very serious as the mother may be at risk of harming herself or others, including her baby or other children.”
The condition saw Dockrill experiencing “mania, mood swings, insomnia, delusions, paranoia, anxiety, severe depression with a lovely side order of psychosis.” She has described it as “hell, it’s been the worst time of my life.”
With the help of medication and the support of her family and friends, Dockrill has made it through the illness and has written a raw blog post about her experience, which Adele linked to in her Instagram post, applauding her friend for being so brave during such a horrific time and asking all the mums out there to be open if they’re suffering any kind of postnatal depression or psychosis.
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