Jesy Nelson has spoken for the first time about attempting to take her own life, after receiving a barrage of online abuse.

The Little Mix singer is currently gearing up for the release of her new BBC Three documentary, which centres around trolling and cyberbullying, having been on the receiving end of hurtful comments since her time on The X Factor in 2011.

She told The Guardian that she eventually began “obsessing” about the nasty things were being written about her online, explaining: “I had a routine of waking up, going on Twitter, searching for the worst things I could about myself.

“I’d type in the search bar, ‘Jesy fat’, or ‘Jesy ugly’, and see what would come up. Sometimes I didn’t even need to do that, I’d just write ‘Jesy’ and then I’d see all the horrible things. Everyone told me to ignore it – but it was like an addiction.”

Jesy went on to say that as she became increasingly distraught over what was being said, she tried to take her own life, noting: “I felt that I physically couldn’t tolerate the pain any more.”

The following year, Jesy and her bandmates toured the US with Demi Lovato, during which time the Sorry Not Sorry singer’s dancers encouraged her to take herself off social media.

“It was a long, hard process, because I didn’t want to help myself. But it wasn’t until I deleted Twitter that everything changed for me and I slowly started to feel normal again,” she explained.

Jesy previously spoke about the difficulties she faced in the early years of Little Mix around the release of the band’s most recent album LM5.

“When I first started out, I never wanted to talk about my weight,” Jesy told HuffPost UK last year. “I was like, ‘for fuck’s sake, is this all I’m ever going to be known for?’.

“I wanted to be known as just the singer in the group, I didn’t wanna be known as ‘the fat one’ or ‘the one who’s bigger than the others’. It was just so draining, and I just thought, ‘if I don’t talk about this, then hopefully it’ll go away’.

“But then I was like, ‘fuck it’, we need to talk about it, because the more we do, the more we are empowering girls to look at themselves in the mirror and go, ‘I’m a normal girl, there’s nothing wrong with my body, this is normal, and I should love this’, instead of looking at Instagram and comparing themselves to other girls.”

Jesy Nelson: Odd One Out debuts on BBC Three on 12 September.

Useful websites and helplines:

• Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393
• Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI – this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill.)
• The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email: help@themix.org.uk
• Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0300 5000 927 (open Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on www.rethink.org.