This November I'm taking on 30 days of challenges to raise awareness about male mental health and suicide prevention. These challenges are to be crowd sourced, so you can have an input and challenge me to a fitness challenge, a recipe, skill..... anything I can do from my doorstep given the way the world may go this winter.

The darker months of the year can be tough for everyone and finding motivation to get outside, be active and engage with others can be a challenge for many.

I hope to inspire and motivate others to get out and invest in their mental wellbeing this November.

Mind helped me out some five years ago, when I found myself in the depths of a negative episode and ended up talking about my suicidal thoughts to a GP. Having never met the GP before, I should have probably started with hello and a bit of a backstory, as my direct but polite words had her looking like she’d just seen a ghost. I was referred to Mind, after CBT wasn’t for me and had 6 sessions of counselling at their Milton Keynes office. It was enough to break me out of the downward spiral and put me in a position to lean on the lessons I had learnt from 18 months of counselling/therapy from Christiane Sanderson in my early 20s.

CALM or the Campaign Against Living Miserably hasn’t been a charity ive used directly, but I all too aware of the role they play in helping people in their time of crisis and the significance this has for men, given statically 75% of all UK suicides are male. Every night of the year, CALM offer accredited confidential, anonymous and free support, information and signposting to men anywhere in the UK through their webchat service. Chats are taken by trained staff who are there to listen, support, inform and signpost. And because calls are confidential and anonymous we don’t and can’t offer a counselling service

Below you have the option of donating to either Mind or CALM, top link for Mind BLMK and bottom link for CALM.

I hope to see what you get up this November, whether you join in with a challenge at home or do your own thing. Make sure you share it with me on instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jamesmackeddie/