Emma's torment set her on life to helping others

And she says her arrest for credit card fraud actually came as something of a relief.

But little more than a year after her life looked to be at rock bottom, Emma Lawrence says she is happier than she has ever been in her life, using her own experiences to help others come to terms with their mental health problems.

Having turned her life around with the help of the Probation Service, Emma is now an office manager at Branches, a new charity formed earlier this year which provides a listening and counselling service for people with mental health problems. In theory she works part-time for 20 hours a week, but so dedicated is she to her work, she spends the rest of the work volunteering, listening to people going through similar problems which led to her life going off the rails.

"I can change the lives of people, some of the people we work with have tried to kill themselves, or have been to prison, Iove it," she says.

Branches was founded in April this year by Kelly Middleton, as a partner organisation to Telford After Care Team (Tact), which helps people deal with drug and alcohol problems.

Emma, 39, from the St George's area of Telford, had a successful career working as a credit control manager prior to the birth of her third child in 2008. But after the birth, she suffered severe postnatal depression, and her decision to quit work and stay at home with her children also had an effect.

"To cope with the depression, I self-medicated with drugs, I became addicted to amphetamines," she says.

"I managed to get myself off the drugs, but then I swapped that addiction for a gambling addiction, I have quite an addictive personality."

This led her to running up massive debts, which she had managed to conceal from her husband Stephen until matters came to a head.

"I had a drug dealer coming to the door wanting his money," she says. "I lost everything through the gambling. Even when I had a big win, I went and gambled it all away."

Then in November 2015, Emma was diagnosed with cervical cancer, for which she started receiving radiotherapy.

"I felt I was being punished for everything, for what I had put my family through," she says.

"I thought it was God's way to say 'this is your punishment', I was all over he place.

"It was just before Christmas, and I didn't have any treatment until the January because I didn't want it to ruin Christmas.

"I managed to get through Christmas all right, I just put it to the back of my mind. I'm not a very open person, it's not like I went around telling the world. I wasn't very good at talking about my emotions and stuff like that. I told my husband and that was that."

It was at this time when Emma's trouble's took a decisive turn.

"I was approached by a friend who was having money problems, they asked me to do something with them that I knew was against the law, and I said yes," she says.

"I'm no master criminal, I did the fraud using my own name, and I was always going to get caught. It was a cry for help.

"When I got arrested for credit card fraud, I felt relief, I wanted people to acknowledge that I needed help."

She was given sentenced to a year's probation, and it was through her rehabilitation programme that she ultimately become involved with Branches.

"I met Rob Eyres, the chief executive of Tact, at probation.

"Rob was doing something called 'peer mentoring', where some of the people doing probation would help the other members, and Rob said 'why don't you come and see what we do at Tact?"

Emma became involved with arts and women's groups run by Tact, and it was during this time that her efforts came to the attention of Kelly, who was working on setting up the new charity.

"I think because I came from a pretty good background, I had held management roles in the past, that Kelly saw something in me," she says.

The charity now has a team of 68 volunteers, 40 of them actively providing regular support. The majority of the people who use the service come through the "drop-in" service at its base in Strickland House, Wellington, although it also accepts GP referrals and runs drop-in at centres across the Telford area. The charity also works with the police, providing help when officers believe suspects are displaying signs of mental health problems.

Kelly, who has worked in mental health for eight years, had identified the need to provide a more personal and proactive service, that would get their lives back on track once the underlying causes had been dealt with.

"We need to get people engaged on their own recovery, to give people opportunities," she says.

"We can give people the opportunity to improve their CV, we can give them training and get them work experience. It's about improving the after care."

The charity has received initial funding from the NHS for its work, although in the longer term it will be expected to become self sufficient.

Emma says her own experiences, coupled with the skills she picked up in her previous career mean she is ideally placed to help those who are struggling in their lives.

And for all the trauma she has been through, she wouldn't change her life over the past few years.

"If I hadn't have got in trouble, I wouldn't have met Rob, and if I hadn't have had my own mental health issues, I wouldn't have known about this place," she says.

"I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now."

Emma is in awe of her husband Stephen, who has never wavered in his support for her.

"I had massive support off my family and husband, if I had not had that support, I don't know what would have happened.

"We have lost everything, our home, our car, but he has always been there for me. We owed money to all these people, and he was oblivious to it. My parents, my husband, and my aunts and uncles had a meeting behind my back and said 'something's going on'.

"My husband has been through such a lot, I had really bad anger issues, I even stabbed him, I was that frustrated.

"I had no sleep for about a week, and we were having an argument. He went to stop me doing something, and I just picked up a knife and stabbed him in the shoulder. As soon as I had done it I said I was going to get myself help, I'm sorry, give me another chance, but I was always saying that. I was always doing something I shouldn't be doing.

"Sometimes it would be not paying a bill, and saying I had paid it. It wasn't about the money, it's hard to describe why I did it.

"When you suffer from depression, it's like you have two worlds. There is the real world, where you have all these problems, and there is your own world where you just hide away from everything, and everything is all right."

*Branches operates a drop-in service at Strickland House, The Lawns, Wellington, from 9am to 5pm Monday to Saturday. It also operates a service at Dawley Christian Centre from 10am to 1pm on Mondays, at Donnington Community Hub the same time on Wednesdays, and at the Park Lane Centre, Telford, from 10am to 2pm Thursdays.