A leading businessman – who has given a candid account of how his life was blighted by obsessive compulsive disorder – has launched a campaign to make mental health education compulsory in the nation’s schools.

Adam Shaw, who amassed a multi-million pound fortune in legal services, has announced plans to spend the next decade raising awareness of mental health.

Today, the House of Commons will discuss whether the topic should become a mandatory part of the curriculum in both primary and secondary schools.

Mr Shaw believes this would be a hugely important step and raised a petition which was signed by over 100,000 people, prompting the Parliamentary debate.

The tycoon, whose own experiences persuaded him to set up The Shaw Mind Foundation, said that his OCD had become so debilitating he had made repeated attempts to take his own life.

He said: “My OCD wasn’t a case of lining things up, it was very intrusive. I was frightened I would kill people, I would walk around with handcuffs so I could put them on because I thought I was going to strangle people. I couldn’t be around my children with knives.”

The 40-year-old said that the situation, which he likened to “mental torture”, was made worse by the fact that there was a real stigma attached to this type of condition. Indeed, he did not receive a formal diagnosis until his late 20s.

The businessman’s charity had previously commissioned a survey which suggested that more than three quarters of parents believed that their children should be better educated about mental health in schools.

Its proposal would be to fold the subject into either Personal, Social, Economic and Health lessons or PE.

“Suicide is the biggest killer of young people under 35, with on average 126 suicides a week,” said Mr Shaw. “Teaching about mental health in schools will bring the next generation up in a society where well-being and resilience is central. Just think of the impact that good mental health could have.”