AceShowbiz - N-Dubz's star Tula Contostavlos aka Tulisa was so depressed as a teenager, she regularly self-harmed - and twice tried to kill herself. The British frontwoman of the hip-hop act endured a troubled childhood after falling in with a bad crowd, before starting a relationship with an abusive older man.

When the romance ended Contostavlos developed anorexia and even tried to end her own life as her moods sank so low. The singer opens up about the traumas in new book "N-Dubz: Against All Odds", stating "I had my first proper boyfriend as a teenager. We were sexually active and I was staying over at his house. But it was a bad relationship. I had lied about my age and he was older than me. He was really handsome and everyone fancied him but he was violent and abusive towards me."

"It was mad because on the streets I was powerful and tough. But as a female in a relationship I was weak as hell. He just broke me down into nothing and made me feel like c**p. He'd tell me I was ugly and lock me in the bathroom while he went out. I don't blame him - he had a very tough upbringing - but eventually he left me for another girl."

"I was so devastated that I stopped eating and dropped a stone and a half, down to seven stone. That's when my self-harming got really bad and I even took it further twice by trying to kill myself. My mum had loads of pills in her cupboard so I went in there and grabbed a bottle of whatever I could see. I ended up necking a load then becoming really sick, throwing up."

"Another time I slashed my wrists and they started bleeding really badly, which panicked me as I realized what I was doing to myself. I remember sitting there holding a towel over it and crying, thinking 'What am I doing?' "