SAS Who Dares Wins: Yorkshire contestant who had panic attack in jungle plans second crack at show

Charlotte Fisher, from Guiseley, dropped out of the latest series of the Channel 4 show following a panic attack – but has enlisted the help of a hypnotherapist and now feels so much better she wants to have another crack at the gruelling series.

The show sees a group of ex-Army soldiers put regular people through the Special Air Services screening process to test their mental, emotional and physical strength. Charlotte said she had the panic attack due to an ‘underlying issue’ in her life, which she didn’t realise until she started working with Marcus Matthews, who is based in Shropshire.

The nutritionist had previously tried therapy, ultra marathon challenges, moving home, four different types of medication and self-help to no avail, but found her mental health improve when she started seeing Mr Matthews.

She said: “I think I’d resigned myself to a life of just ‘managing’ and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to ‘get better’ but one month on, and I want people to know that you can get better - mental health isn’t a life sentence. I wondered why nobody told me about this before and I wish it was more of a mainstream thing that people talk about because I would never have come across it on my own.”

And despite “wanting to hate” hypnotherapy, she found working with Mr Matthews “amazing”.

She added: “I’m a scientist and find it difficult to get on board with approaches that don’t have a strong grounding in research, but I decided to give it a go, thanks to a bit of desperation and feeling let down by more traditional therapeutic approaches, combined with curiosity, as Marcus backed himself so hard and was so sure he could help me.

“He wasn’t like other therapists I had seen and it was completely not what I expected - it is not the weird Derren Brown stuff you think about and it is not about someone else being in control of you. He had an appreciation for my situation and you could tell he’s been through this type of event in his life so understood all the signs - he was able to adapt the process to suit me.”

Mr Matthews set up his business in 2020 after suffering a breakdown when on the verge of suicide as a serving police officer. The former British Army veteran now runs Make Your Life Count and has previously helped the likes of former Atomic Kitten star Kerry Katona.

He reached out to Charlotte after watching her struggles on SAS: Who Dares Wins.

He said: “The SAS Who Dares Wins team talk a lot personally about mental health and it was a big call for Charlotte to voluntarily withdraw herself from the process. Many serving personnel won't ask for help until it's too late and then get medically discharged - so Charlotte's early exit is a mirror of what is happening in both the police and military and this links to my own personal experience.

“The solution is to find the root cause of the feeling so people don't have to wait until they break. We know there is an issue with access to GPs and other NHS healthcare so I want to make sure people are aware that there is another option through hypnotherapy.”