Learning to Breathe - My Journey with Mental Illness

It begins slowly, so slowly that I hardly notice at first. My chest tightens and my heart begins to beat a fraction faster. I try to draw breath, but instead I choke on oxygen I can't inhale. As I realise that I can't breathe, the panic wraps itself around my mind.

I can't make myself draw a breath.

Rachael was aged just six when she had her first suicidal thought. Over the next decade, life would become increasingly fraught with depression and self-harm, and her outlook only bleaker. Before her eighteenth birthday, Rachael would twice try to take her own life.

And yet amidst this darkness, a flicker of faith lived on.

This is Rachael's story of her journey into, and out of, the darkness of depression. With unflinching realism and complete honesty, she shows us what it looks like to live with mental illness, and how God can find us and rescue us even in the most desperate of places.

Rachael Newham is the Founding Director of ThinkTwice, a mental health awareness charity and a graduate of the London School of Theology. She is an associate at Mind and Soul, a trainer for selfharmUK, and regularly writes features and articles for Premier Youthwork magazine and Threads.