This year, I wrote and illustrated four children's books for families where a parent has a severe mental health problem - bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, anorexia or self harm - to help kids to understand what their mum or dad is going through, what causes their illness, and how the health professionals involved can work together to help them.

I personally suffer from bipolar disorder, and I've had other related mental health problems, so I wrote from the perspective of someone who might have to talk to their own kids about their illness some day. It's a daunting task and I felt that it would be useful to have a colourful storybook to help them to understand.

My own nurses told me that there was a need for this kind of resource as there is a shift towards treating people as members of a family unit rather than just as individuals, and already the books are going to be used in some community healthcare settings.

The difficulty is that these 24 page books are self-published in colour and cost around £5 each to produce. At the moment, parents can have a PDF of the books for free, but it's not quite the same as sitting down with a child and a storybook to start a conversation about mental health.

I would love to be able to give the family workers who are interested in the project 100 books so that they can offer them to families for free.

If 100 people were able to give £5 to this cause, then that goal could be achieved.