Frank Bruno: I've been sectioned twice in the last 18 months

Frank Bruno today made an emotional admission that he has been “sectioned” twice in the last 18 months due to mental health problems.

The former heavyweight boxing champion spoke of his struggle with mental illness in a video shown at the Liberal Democrat conference.

He recorded the film to highlight progress in tackling mental health issues and to introduce the speech of Lib-Dem health minister Norman Lamb, whose efforts to improve services he praised. Bruno’s problems first hit the headlines in 2003, when police escorted him to hospital after he suffered a severe bout of depression.

He said: “My name is Frank Bruno and I’m talking from experience of being sectioned about three times, two times in the last 18 months.

“I’m just a nobody really, I’m just a human being. Yesterday I used to do boxing and I used to be a celebrity, but I’m talking to you as a human being from experience.

“I met Norman Lamb and he’s changed a lot of different things for mental health people. He’s very concerned ... very, very passionate.” He said he hoped the Lib-Dems “do very, very well” so Mr Lamb can stay in his job.

Bruno, who won his world title in 1995 and lost it to Mike Tyson the following year, has also been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Mr Lamb was to tell the conference: “Frank Bruno came to talk to me about his experience ... the acute embarrassment and humiliation of three police cars arriving at your house, as if a dreadful crime had been committed. But he was ill.”

Mr Lamb was set to pledge a new “carers’ bonus” worth £250 a year, and a “carers’ passport” offering help such as free hospital parking or gym and cinema vouchers.