Jodie Moss was so blighted by depression that three years ago, she woke up not knowing how she was going to get through another day. Feeling mentally and physically “paralysed”, she took an overdose in an attempt to end her life.
“I didn’t want to die but I didn’t know how to live,” the 28-year-old PhD researcher recalled. “I hit rock bottom.”
After intensive therapy and medication she can now manage her “negative thoughts”, having built up resilience and coping strategies.
And in thanks for the life-changing support of North London mental health charity iheart, she is looking to raise £20,000 through completing the world’s toughest race — next week’s 250km Marathon des Sables across the Sahara Desert. The money will go towards the charity’s mental health programme which is being rolled out at schools and universities.
“I know for a fact that if I had [earlier] access to the support from iheart, I wouldn’t have been in such a dark place,” Ms Moss told the JC. “I first started to suffer when I was 15 and it got really bad in my 20s. I was so consumed by my own thoughts and fears that even getting out of bed was a real struggle.”
Today’s teenagers faced social and academic pressure, she noted — “and in the Jewish community, a sense you have to be successful like your family”.
She had been fortunate to receive help and wanted others to be able to access similar support.
The seven-day Sahara challenge will be in temperatures regularly reaching 50 degrees centigrade and participants have to carry their own supplies, including a venom pump “in case we get bitten by a snake or a scorpion.
“I feel confident. I will run at my own pace with about 900 other people also doing the challenge.
“You don’t do it unless you are a runner. One of the days we will run a double marathon distance and that can take you into the night.”
Generating funds for the charity that helped her constituted “a real victory. It symbolises that I am here and can do this.”
Further motivation was the memory of her grandfather, property boss and philanthropist Cyril Dennis, who died in 2016.
“He was always giving and was a big macher in the community. I want to be able to do that for other people.”
