Time to Talk day 3 – What do our clients say?

Ryan Anderton has used cycling as his well-being tool. He says this: 

At the age of 30, I was first admitted to a mental health hospital ward after attempting suicide in a B&B in Blackpool.

I call it my ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ moment after the film when Nicolas Cage decides to go there to drink himself to death.

Eight years on, I have used the power of cycling to launch my own mental health campaign, Recycle Yourself. And I am training for a 4.802-mile ride around the entire coast of Britain to raise money for mental health charity Mind.

Cycling works for me and I know I’m now pushing it to the extreme but ultimately my best advice to anyone with a mental health issue is that medication is only one course of treatment – there is so much that you can do yourself to improve your mindfulness, well-being and ways of coping. Many of these ‘tools’ I have developed thanks to the mental health voluntary sector.

A solution is out there, you might need to seek it out a bit more in the short term but help is available.

I accidentally stumbled upon a men’s mental health and suicide prevention group Andy’s Man Club one Monday night in January 2017 in Hebden Bridge. 

Things then started to make sense. 

I adopted the club’s #itsokaytotalk motto, spoke openly and listened to other men with similar issues and realised I wasn’t alone and that many men were and are suffering in the same way.

Author: Nattie Haden
Posted on: 6th February 2019