Sarah Ferguson reveals battle with traumatic stress after major setback

Sarah Ferguson has opened up on her mental stress amid reports of latest snub from King Charles III on his big day.

In her heartbreaking admission, the Duchess of York shared the bitter truth about her “profound scars.” 

Writing for The Telegraph, Prince Andrews ex-wife explained how “tabloid headlines of the 1980s and 1990s” and more recent “comments on social media (which I regard as a cesspit)” left an impact on her life.

Ferguson, who was the extent of alleged online vitriol combined with a double cancer diagnosis, claimed her mind was forced “to some dark places”.

She was brutally mocked as the “Duchess of Pork” and “Fat Fergie” when she gained weight during her first pregnancy, adding her difficult childhood has had a much more profound effect on her adult life than she ever realised.

Fergusons mother reportedly abandoned her to live with an Argentinian polo player Hector Barrantes, leaving her to look after her father Major Ron Ferguson.

Susan Barrantes was killed in a car crash in 1998 just a year after the death of her beloved sister-in-law Princess Diana.

In a 2018 TV interview with US show Modern Hero, she said: “Suddenly she’d gone and she never came back and I never saw her again really. I built a huge wall to the real Sarah. And I believed it was because I was worthless. Why would you leave your child? You wouldn’t.”

Ferguson, popularly known as Fergie, has always stuck by her ex-husband Prince Andrew, with whom she still shares a home at Royal Lodge. She had a similar “double diagnosis” of breast cancer and skin cancer in 2023 and 2024 – which has also had an understandable impact on her mental health.

She wrote: “Most recently, I don’t mind admitting that my mind went to some dark places – focusing on my own mortality – when I was diagnosed with first breast cancer and then skin cancer, which my father had when he died and also killed my best friend.”