A mum-of-three who calls herself a “domestic abuse survivor” has published a book aimed at encouraging other victims to suffer in silence no longer.

Rita Edah, 48, of Buryside Close, Newbury Park, has published her first fictional book, Beauty’s Story, describing a woman’s realisation that she is a victim of emotional domestic abuse. Her story has been highlighted as part of Mental Health Awareness Week.

She said: “I want to help others and make them see that they don’t have to live with this, that they can escape.”

Rita was married for 17 years, but it was only in 2009 that she started to see that her relationship with her husband was not normal.

She said: “My ex-husband used to undermine me and made me have very little confidence in myself, but I just thought he did this because he cared.

“A lot of people are not aware that it is happening to them. They just think it is love, that they are being overprotective because they love me, but that isn’t what love is.”

But when Ms Edah read an article online about a book by Patricia Evans called The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How To Recognise It And How To Respond, she ordered the book and read it from back to front.

Rita said: “When I finished reading, I thought “Wow. This is my life.” It was from then that I started observing him and saw there was a pattern in his behaviour. It was only when I confronted him on it that he wasn’t willing to fix it so I knew it was time to get out.”

Ms Edah separated from her husband in 2009 and their divorce was finalised in 2012.

She said: “Once it was all over I felt free. I no longer had someone putting me down all of the time and I could just be myself from now on.

“I am a domestic abuse survivor and my aim is for the reader to not turn a blind eye and if they are being abused or know someone that is, they should make it their business and try their best to make it stop.”

Visit mentalhealth.org.uk.