Learning to Breathe by Rachael Newham is a practical handbook and personal account of her depression and suicidal thoughts written to raise awareness of mental illness and advise those in pastoral roles. 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.