Agony aunt Sally Brampton dies following battle with depression

An agony aunt and former magazine editor has died after losing her battle with depression.

The body of Sally Brampton, 60, was found washed up on a beach in Sussex.

Ms Brampton, who worked as an agony aunt at The Sunday Times, launched Elle magazine in the 1980s but later began writing about the “black wilderness” of clinical depression.

In her 2008 memoir, she said she decided to write about depression because “sharing can bring us out of the dark and into the light.”

Former friends and colleagues of the writer paid tribute to her after her death.

Journalist Tony Parsons said: "Choked to hear that Sally Brampton has died - a great journalist, a lovely woman and as editor of Elle UK she gave me work when I had none.”

PR consultant Lynne Franks said: “As an agony aunt she used her own pain and her own suffering to try to help others, and she did a lot of good for a lot of people. But the only demons she could not help were her own.