Love Island’s Niall Aslam Left The Show After Suffering From Psychosis And Spent Two Weeks In Psychiatric Hospital

Former Love Island contestant Niall Aslam has opened up about why he left the 2018 series early.

The 25-year-old was a hit with viewers during the fourth season of Love Island, which also featured Dani Dyer and Megan Barton-Hanson, for his one-liners and his Harry Potter obsession.

But seven days in, Niall bowed out of the programme with ITV citing "personal reasons" as to why he left the show.

While Niall later stated he had Asperger's syndrome, he has now added he was admitted into a psychiatric hospital for two weeks, suffering from hallucinations and a struggle to grasp reality.

Taking to Instagram, Niall explained: "I came out and talked about my Asperger's and I was diagnosed at 10 years old, and that was basically the reason I left Love Island.

"But what actually happened to me, I ended up watching Love Island in a psychiatric hospital in London.

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"What I later found out is that I had something called stress-induced psychosis... I did not know what that was.

"Essentially what it is, you get so overwhelmed that you lose touch with reality.

"You kind of hallucinate, you don't know what's going on, you're not fully aware of your surroundings, you're not safe, you need other people to look after you."

When Niall was discharged from hospital, he struggled with his return to normal life due to his newfound celebrity status - causing him to fall into depression.

"It was a really upside down time for me," he said. "I think it took quite a long time for me to recover fully from it because of the Love Island situation.

"I was trying to get back to reality and my reality was different. I was really struggling."

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Niall added that he kept how he was feeling private.

"I was able to mask that for a long time, I was going to events, I was meeting people," he explained. "In my head, I was all over the place. I was really depressed, I was avoiding things. It took a long time to recover. Everyone thought I was having the best time but I had the crisis team round every morning, because they had to come and check up on me."

Niall decided to speak out candidly about his mental health in a bid to try and get others to speak openly about their own struggles, and to encourage people to check on their loved ones.

He captioned his post: "I think it's important if I'm in a position to share my story and journey with mental health and if it could help someone else then it's something I should do.

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"I've always wanted to be more open with people and talk more about mental health but it's something I've not really been completely open about, as I guess for a period of time I felt embarrassed and shied away from what happened to me.

"This video is in short my journey of what I went through from leaving Love Island to going to a psychiatric hospital and my early diagnosis, everything which in the end made me a stronger person. I'd hope what people get from watching this short video is that people can be very good at masking what they might be going through and just checking up on people can really help."

Tyla has contacted ITV for comment.

Topics: Mental Health, TV News, TV & Film, TV Entertainment, Love Island

Kimberley Bond

Kim is a journalist at Tyla, and has previously worked at the Evening Standard, Radio Times as well as several national newspapers. A showbiz obsessive and a television fanatic, Kim is particularly interested in celebrity gossip, A-list events and the latest releases on either the big or small screen. Contact her at [email protected]

@0xKimberley