I’m running the Richmond Half Marathon in September, for YoungMinds. During the pandemic I started to suffer from anxiety and depression during the pandemic, like a lot people but found it controllable did but it worsened once the country opened up.

A lot of personal events in the following few months led to my depression and anxiety becoming completely uncontrollable and it took over my life, I started to suffer from debilitating panic attacks on a near daily basis and it affected basic activities to the point where simple things like washing and eating became a huge struggle. I felt very alone and scared all of the time and I didn’t know what to do or how to talk about how I was feeling and tried to avoid the feelings by hiding them with alcohol and hiding my feelings, like a lot of people and pretended I was ok. I decided to seek professional help after a few months of feeling like this and began seeing a therapist weekly, which I still do now. It Over time after breaking down events in my personal life, I learnt how anxiety works and what triggered me and I began to be able to control my responses to my anxiety and slowly, I started to get better, and my mental health is far better now because of it. I think the biggest lesson I learned and am still learning is that it’s ok to not be ok.

I know that I’m privileged to be able to afford professional help to deal with my mental health where others can’t and I believe mental health disorders with young adults especially has grown and it’s a scary thing to navigate when you don’t have the tools to deal with it and Young Minds works with young adults and children to help them cope with life’s adversities and find help when needed, it also works with parents so that they can better understand mental health disorders and support their children.

If you can donate anything at all for this great cause, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Paul