Five years ago, my wife, Chloe suffered a mental health breakdown, which led to her planning to end her own life. During the depths of her depression, a friend gave her the local NHS crisis line number with the hope of Chloe finding a way out of the dark place she was in.

The nurse that Chloe spoke to via the crisis line recommended Mind as a point of information, which helped her understand more about the mental health crisis she was experiencing, specifically mental OCD and intrusive thoughts which were making her question her own morals, values and existence.

Chloe's intrusive thoughts were so intense and obsessive, she wanted to end her life. She suffered with insomnia, was physically throwing up, constantly shaking, and didn't eat for weeks. She couldn't watch TV, read or even listen to music, everything made her thoughts worse. We'd never heard of intrusive thoughts or mental OCD and Chloe was terrified of what was happening to her brain. This was heartbreaking for me and our family to watch.

Prior to Chloe's breakdown, I was ashamedly ignorant to mental health issues and experiencing what happened to my wife opened my eyes to the challenges many of us go through on a daily basis. It has been, and still is, a huge learning curve for both of us and as part of this journey, I'm challenging myself to run The Great North Run for Mind, a key organisation that enabled us to better navigate Chloe's mental health challenges together.

What Chloe went through really made it clear that a mental health crisis can happen to anyone and having never done anything like this before, I hope that taking this challenge on can raise money that will help Mind keep supporting people who need it most.