Love Island mental health: what previous winners Jack Fincham, Paige Turley and Amber Gill said about the show

Tonight, Monday 16 January, marks the newest season of the ITV2 dating show Love Island, the second in its winter edition. We will see Maya Jama take over hosting duties for the first time after taking over the reins from Laura Whitmore.

Following controversy that the show had dealt with over the years in regards to safeguarding its contestants, the show recently announced that it would be taking social media away from its participants whilst they’re inside the villa as part of new duty of care measures.

This is what some of the previous winners have said about being on the show, and how they were affected after leaving the villa.

What have previous winners said about the show?

This is what some of the previous winners of Love Island have said about the show.

Jack Fincham

Speaking to the Sun, 2018 winner Jack Fincham, who won the show with Dani Dyer, has said that he finds it “hard to watch”.

Fincham said that he would be tuning in for the upcoming winter series, but added: “It’s mad, it’s hard for me to watch… I know things are done. So I’m like, “I bet that took four hours”, like the challenges and stuff taking ages, but I love the show, I love it. I was a fan, a massive fan of it. I’ve always watched it.”

In 2021, Fincham revealed in an appearance on the Steven Sulley Podcast that he had attempted to take his own life after being on the show. He explained that the lack of structure in his life and absence of financial advice had left him depressed.

He said: “With me, I’ve got really bad ADHD, I can’t concentrate on anything… it’s awful. I was earning good money doing sales, I was happy, I had structure there - I knew if I went out on a Wednesday and didn’t turn up on Thursday, you’d get a bit of a b******ing.

“When I was huge, there was no backlash. If I wanted to go out and do something and I didn’t want to turn up the next day, then I wouldn’t, and that’s the wrong attitude. There was no structure. I had all this time and money on my hands and I just… I wouldn’t say f**ked it, but put it this way, without that structure, I fell to bits.”

He explained that as his finances started to dwindle and work post-Love Island started to slow down, he felt like he hit “rock bottom”.

He said: “Christmas time… I was ready to go, I didn’t want to be here. Then March, my nan passed away, that really affected me, and that year and a half has just been a downward spiral, watching the money go down and down and down, watching work go down and down and down. More and more time to be in your own head, more and more time to think, “what is my purpose?””

Fincham said that Love Island producers should have offered its contestants more guidance when it came to the spike in cash that some of the islanders experience when they leave the show - especially the winners who split a £50k prize.

He said: “They should say, “Listen, you’re going to earn this amount of money, invest it, save it, do something with it”. They don’t tell you how to manage your money - you’re getting these brand deals, you’re getting this TV work, it’s super, super money. My personality, having a tonne of money on your hands is a bad, bad mix, and over the last three years, I spiralled out of control, and I’m only just pulling myself back together.”

Paige Turley

Paige Turley and Finley Tapp won the first winter edition of the show back in 2020, and are one of the few Love Island couples that appear to have stood the test of time, with the two still together and living in a flat in Manchester.

Turley and Tapp recently appeared on the Channel 4 documentary Life After Love Island which revisited some of the contestants from the series over the years to see how their lives had progressed after being on the ITV2 programme.

At one point host Will Njobvu asked the two what they had struggled with after winning the show, with Turley revealing that she had experienced “anxiety and low moods”, especially as a result of abuse on social media.

She said: “I struggled with anxiety and low moods which I never thought I would. I was very strong minded before the show but afterwards, there so many opinions around about you. You start to question and start to believe stuff. It does take you to a place where you’re looking in the mirror and constantly questioning yourself - and that I struggled with for a while.”

According to data presented by the documentary, 26% of tweets mentioning a female contestant on the show were offensive, compared to the 14% of tweets which named a male participant.

Amber Gill

Amber Gill won Love Island with rugby player Greg O’Shea in 2019, beating out bookies favourites Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae Hague. In 2021, she and fellow Love Island winner Kem Cetinay teamed up to host the ITV2 show The Full Treatment, which was a mental health focused series which partnered with mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably.

In an interview with the i about the show, Gill had said that she had never experienced poor mental health until she left the Love Island villa.

She said: “I had to learn to really trust my support system and lean on people. I went from somebody who didn’t really know about mental health to somebody that has those issues and has got the other side - I can relate to the people who just want to talk to somebody.”

When life is difficult, Samaritans are here – day or night, 365 days a year. You can call them for free on 116 123 or visit samaritans.org to find your nearest branch.