‘I attempted suicide — now I am about to run 250km across the Sahara Desert’

“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.”