Writer Julie Burchill has spoken of the guilt and grief she feels following the death of her son who killed himself three weeks ago.

The author and columnist, 56, revealed in an emotional Facebook post earlier this month that her youngest son, Jack Landesman, 29, had taken his own life.

His body was discovered while she was on holiday on the Greek island of Crete at the end of June, more than a year since she had last seen him.

Writer Julie Burchill (left) has spoken of the guilt and grief she feels following the death of her son Jack Landesman, 29, (right) who killed himself three weeks ago

In a poignant piece written for The Sunday Times Magazine, Burchill revealed how Jack, her son with writer and critic Cosmo Landesman, now 60, had not left a note before he died, but had written a statement for his father.

In it he described his feelings about his depression and how he had 'lost the essence' of himself.

'I've lost the ability to have any kind of pleasurable emotional or verbal connection with anyone, resulting in the highest possible degree of isolation,' he had written.

Burchill also described the strain she felt at caring for Jack, who had struggled with depression and drugs for the last decade of his life.

'No one who hasn’t been the primary carer of someone with severe mental problems for an extended period, living with them, can begin to imagine what it’s like,' she wrote.

'Yes, it’s true that we should do everything we can to dispel the stigma around mental illness. But no, it’s not the same as nursing someone with a broken leg. You can’t ’catch’ a broken leg. The patient will heal. To be the principal carer of a mentally ill person is to risk your own mental health, too. You can catch it.'

Aspiring musician Jack, Burchill's son with had first experienced mental health problems during his first year of university which caused him to drop out of his studies.

He was admitted to the Priory clinic at 19, and was taking antidepressants, off and on, for the next decade.

Jack, pictured left as a young boy, is Burchill's son with the critic Cosmo Landesman (right)

The author and columnist, 56, revealed in an emotional Facebook post earlier this month that her youngest son, Jack Landesman, 29, had taken his own life

Burchill continued to support him, but did not see him in the year before his death in order to protect her own mental health.

She had asked him to leave her home after an argument in 2013, and last saw him the summer before his death as mother and son conversed via emails, with him asking for money she believed would end up being spent on drugs.

Burchill, who did not attend her son's funeral on Friday, said Jack had refused to keep taking his medication

Burchill, who did not attend her son's funeral on Friday, said Jack had refused to keep taking his medication, and declined to take advantage of mental health services' 'talking options', instead smoking 'vast quantities' of cannabis.

'After a lifetime of acting as my boy’s life coach, ATM and personal maid, I had had enough,' Burchill said.

'Finally I peeled his drowning fingers off of me and saved myself, and so when he died I hadn't seen him for a year, having become so despairing over his self-destructiveness.'

Burchill writes how Jack was 'taken' from her at the age of nine. She had lost custody of her son to Mr Landesman after she left him, having started an affair with Modern Review intern Charlotte Raven in 1995.

The affair lasted only a few months but Burchill blamed her relationship with Ms Raven, the sister of her current husband Dan Raven, for the court’s decision to award custody to Mr Landesman.

However, Jack later moved back in with her, and she said that from when Jack was 19 until the time of his death, he had lived with her around five times - each stay lasting around a year.

The Brighton-based author, whose best-selling young adult novel Sugar Rush was adapted for a Channel 4 drama series, had previously spoken of how she enjoyed a better relationship with Jack than her older son Robert - whose father was fellow writer Tony Parsons.

The couple, who met while working at magazine NME, married in 1979 when Ms Burchill was 18, but she walked out on him when Robert, who was born in 1980, was just five.

In 2013, Ms Burchill told Radio 4's Desert Island Discs that she had 'fought very hard' for custody of Jack, and added that at the time of the interview he was living with her.

She has rarely spoken publicly about her children, but in an interview with the Jewish Chronicle in 2008, she had said of her sons: 'In many people's eyes, what I've done has been a horrible way for a person to behave but I haven't had a single moment of regret.

'Every time I've left a family, I've gone on to be much happier. I have two sons, one I don't see and one who lives with me, for my sins. That's Jack, who's 22. He's the apple of my eye, my Achilles heel.'

The Sunday Times said that Burchill's fee for the piece would be donated to two suicide charities - Calm, which works to prevent male suicide, and Sobs which works with bereaved families.