"I was sitting on the kitchen floor with a knife in my hand, stabbing myself in the legs and begging my husband to get rid of our baby," says Elaine Hanzak.

"I was conscious of what I was doing, but I was looking down on myself doing these things and not knowing why."

She then went out into the rain in her nightie in the early hours of the morning and was found curled up on the steps of her local church having suffered a complete breakdown.

Elaine was suffering from severe post-natal depression, puerperal psychosis, which led to her being hospitalised in a psychiatric unit for two months and having ECT treatment.

"I know the treatment is controversial but for me it worked. I could sleep for the first time in nine months and it was the first step on the road to recovery and for me to come out of the depression."

Prior to the PND Elaine had been a very organised person.

She was a teacher of children with special needs, and had everything she wanted. Getting pregnant was the icing on the cake and she expected it all to go as smoothly and as organised as everything else in her life.

But the birth was very traumatic and her new baby, Dominic, now 12, was taken away immediately for medical treatment.

He was fine but once home only ever slept for two hours at a time.

Elaine became more and more sleep deprived and as her return to work loomed five months after the birth she became more and more introverted.

"I am normally a very sociable person but it got to the stage where I couldn't even answer the phone. But I wasn't lethargic, I was fully of energy but even the smallest decision felt like life changing ones. And I just wasn't sleeping at all."

Just as she was about to go back to work Dominic was rushed to hospital with suspected meningitis. Elaine was signed off work for two weeks to look after her new son, but then her doctor said she was concerned that she was suffering post-natal depression.

By Christmas her conditioned had worsened.

"Dominic was eight months old and I just wasn't functioning. My brain just snapped after months of sleep deprivation. Self-harming seemed to give some respite, I didn't feel any pain.

"I also started to feel an overwhelming urge to hurt Dominic. I never did, but I screamed at Nick to get that 'thing' out of my house."

Because of Christmas staffing problems, Elaine was admitted to a general psychiatric ward rather than a mother and baby unit. It meant that she was separated from Dominic who she was still breastfeeding.

"I didn't want to die," she recalls. "I just wanted my brain to switch off."

She felt the general anaesthetic she had for the electro-convulsive therapy allowed her brain to do just that.

"When I was back on the ward I could visualise going to sleep and it really helped. When I started to sleep again everything started to return to normal.

"I wanted to be with my family at home and with Dominic."

After two months Elaine returned home and started to rebuild her life. When Dominic was two-and-half she felt well enough to return to full-time work.

After having the courage to talk at her local church about her illness on World Mental Health Day, Elaine was asked to give talks to health professionals about her experiences.

She then decided to write a book: Eyes Without Sparkle – a journey through post-natal illness was published three years ago and took her four years to write.

Its publication led to calls for Elaine to give more talks, until she took the decision to give up work.

In between motivational speaking events she worked for Virgin Vie and joined a number of networking groups including Forward Ladies.

It was through Forward Ladies that she was asked to publish the book in French and is now in the process of writing another one specifically designed for the problems in Latvia.

She has also been asked to talk about her experiences at the European Parliament in Strasbourg in the autumn in a bid to improve services across Europe for women with post natal illnesses.

From this weekend Elaine Hanzak can be contacted through www.hanzak.com

For further details on Forward Ladies visit www.forwardladies.com