Rachel Kelly

Rachel Kelly is a bestselling writer, public speaker and mental health campaigner. She writes regularly for the press and gives TV and radio interviews to help educate and break down the stigma around mental illness in her role as an ambassador for several mental health charities. She also shares evidence-based strategies on how to stay calm and well and is the author of four books covering her experience of depression and recovery and her steps to wellbeing from poetry to nutrition. Rachel speaks at events and wellbeing workshops, sharing her motivational and holistic approach to good mental health. She is an official ambassador for Rethink Mental Illness, HeadTalks, SANE and The Counselling Foundation. Her books include her memoir Black Rainbow about her expression of depression which was a Sunday Times bestseller and the winner of the Spears Magazine Memoir Prize in 2014.

She has written three subsequent books about her recovery and how to stay calm and well – Walking on Sunshine: 52 Small Steps to Happiness; The Happy Kitchen: Good Mood Food; and Singing in the Rain, an inspirational workbook published in January 2019. Her next book on the therapeutic power of poetry comes out with Hachette in November 2022.

She is a member of the Speakers Collective, a group of speakers with lived experience of mental health conditions.