Thank you for wanting to find out more about my skydive for Mind, the mental health charity and why I am completing it by taking the time to look at this page.

To those who know me or are friends with me on any of my social media, it is not a secret that I have been unfortunate enough to struggle with significantly poor mental health for the past 7 years and with one in four people in the UK experiencing a mental health problem at any given time, it is clear that I am not alone. That being said, I have been very fortunate to have received some of the best treatment available from inpatient care to NHS outpatient mental health services and finally, support from organisations such as the Samaritans, B-eat and Mind. 

Regardless of the numerous organisations from which I have received support, I have been lucky enough to have been on both the giving and receiving ends of the support that Mind provides, having been a volunteer on the Young Beginnings programme in 2014. This programme worked to reach out to young people as Mind generally can only offer support to those over the age of 18, by visiting schools to promote the importance of looking after your mental wellbeing, recognising warning signs and signposting in the right direction of appropriate forms of support should this be necessary for the child. This project is just one of many projects run by Mind and only one example of the life changing support that they can provide. 

Having moved to Durham to begin university in October last year, I quickly learned of Durham's failing mental health system which led to a rapid decline in my own, previously recovering mental health. Most significantly though, I learned that there was a massive lack of support offered by charitable organisations such as that of Mind in the North East. Having grown up in the areas surrounding London, it was taken for granted the amount of funding there was in terms of mental health charities, with a local Mind nearly on my doorstep. In fact still, everybody complained that it wasn't enough. Now, living in a rural area I have realised how fortunate I was to have a local Mind branch as here in Durham, Mind support is nearly non-existent. This is made even more of a crisis considering the current state of the local NHS service.

Therefore I have chosen to participate in a skydive for Mind in the hope that my fundraising will help contribute to the increase of access to the life saving support that the UK's leading mental health charity can offer and I have seen offer from my own experience in the past. In order to do this though, I require as much support as possible as I must raise a minimum of £395.

In the 4 week lead up to the event on the weekend of the 22nd July, I will be posting a series of blog posts surrounding numerous topics concerned with mental health, specifically personal experiences related to specific mental health conditions - most importantly, this will cover a diagnosis which despite my open discussion of mental illness, I have in fact never publicly revealed to anybody other than family and my closest friends in the fear of being judged due to the heavy amount of stigma linked with this illness. Thus it is fair to say that these blog posts will be very  personal, so please read them with an open mind and I can only hope that my honesty will persuade you to the best of my ability that it is worth donating towards this cause. Please, no matter how large or how small,  your donation counts.

Thank you x x x