Stuart Anderson, the newly elected MP for Wolverhampton, opened up in his maiden speech to Parliament on Thursday about how his faith helped him when he was struggling with suicidal thoughts. 

MPs listening to the speech in the House of Commons were visibly moved as he spoke of how he had considered taking his life when his experience in the Armed Forces left him "broken". 

He served in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, and also in Bosnia and Kosovo, but after being shot, he found himself increasingly relying on alcohol to dull the mental and physical pain. 

He said that drink had been a way to "escape reality" but things became so bad that he felt he was living in a "virtual coma". 

His thoughts turned to suicide and he spoke of feeling "dread" when he woke up in the morning realising he was still alive. 

"The decision I made to shut out my pain when I got shot meant I struggled to feel anything emotionally," he told MPs.

"I was numb. The more I progressed the more the pain hurt. I was going through life in a virtual coma. I would spend evenings in my garage on my own, drinking, looking at a brick wall, wishing my life would end.

"I remember the first thought in the morning when I opened my eyes was one of dread that I hadn't died in my sleep." 

He said it was reaching a point of hopelessness that finally persuaded him to take his own life. 

"Desmond Tutu once described hope as the ability to see light in the darkness. I got to a place where I had no hope. Enough was enough, and I finally decided to end my life," he said. 

But in the end, it was the thought of his kids that stopped him from going through with it. 

"As I was in the process of doing it, I had one thought that stopped me. I didn't want my children to grow up without a father like I had," he said. 

"I couldn't do it. I actually felt a failure not being able to take my own life. There was no escape from the life I was in. I was stuck.

"In my mind, my life was over. I had been dealt a bad hand, and that was my life."

The turning point, he revealed, came when he decided to go to church with his children. It was here that he found faith and was finally able to see "light out of the darkness". 

"There are many reasons why people come out of despair. When I was trying to do something right by my family, I found faith. For the first time in many years, I could see a hope and a future," he said. 

"As the Wolverhampton motto says, out of darkness cometh light. I could see light out of the darkness."