Kevin Frankish Dealing With Panic Attacks
Posted July 12, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
He’s the calm, collected face of Toronto’s number one morning show, Breakfast Television. But Kevin Frankish recently revealed that behind the cool exterior he’s been experiencing crippling panic attacks.
For Frankish, the attacks came totally out of the blue and didn’t seem to have a recognizable trigger.
“All of a sudden my heart starts racing, my entire body turns warm. You just feel like you are about to lose control.”
“They came out of nowhere,” adds CityNews Production Floater Andy Boehme. “He didn’t now what the heck it was when it first started.”
Kevin has been dealing with the panic attacks for the past couple of months. At times they were so bad while he was on air they would have to go to commercial break.
“I would see a look of confusion in his eyes and not necessarily panic but he thought he was going to faint and that’s what I thought, too,” adds Boehme.
Last week Kevin took his “B.T.” team by surprise when he shared his problem with viewers.
“Our viewers needed a explanation. It would be 6:30 and one minute, you would see Kevin and for the rest of the show he is gone. And I had to explain to our viewers first of all and then I got flooded with emails. And everybody said, ‘I had them, I had them. And hang in there. And some e-mails would hurt me, and they would say ‘I have them all the time so basically I stay home.’ “
On Wednesday’s edition of B.T., Kevin interviewed an anxiety expert to let sufferers know they are not alone.
“As far as children, anxiety is number one disorder for children in Canada,” explained therapist Jim Hall. “And with adults it runs neck and neck with depression.”
“We have to get it out in the open,” Frankish adds. “This is not something to be ashamed of. It is not something to be ashamed of so talk about it.”
