Today is World Suicide Prevention Day.
I don’t really know how to write posts like this without it sounding like a headline, so I’ll just tell you why it matters.
I spent the best part of ten years in a place I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Depression that I couldn’t put a name to, let alone explain to the people around me. There was a day when I’d made up my mind that I wasn’t going to be here anymore. I’m still here because something changed at the last minute, and I’ve spent every year since trying to build the thing I needed back then for other men who are exactly where I was.
Four years ago that meant a coffee van. We drove it to car parks, building sites and factories across the North East, because I knew the men we needed to reach would never walk into a building with “support service” written above the door. They’d take a coffee off a stranger though. And once you’re having a coffee, you’re having a conversation, and once you’re having a conversation, you’re not on your own with it anymore.
Fifteen thousand people and counting. Two thousand men through our free programme last year alone. Every one of them has told us some version of the same thing: they felt less alone.
I’ve been sitting on some super exciting (and important!) news for a while now, and today felt like the only day I wanted to share the first bit of it.
Something is coming to High Street West in November. We can’t tell you everything yet, but I can tell you it’s not going to be a mental health café, it’s not just for men, and it’s something we don’t think exists anywhere else in the world. Every penny it makes goes straight back into keeping this free for the next man who needs it, wherever he is in the North East.
If you’d have told me during those ten years that I’d end up here, I wouldn’t have believed you. That’s exactly why I keep doing this.
If today is a hard day, please reach out. Samaritans, free, any time, on 116 123. CALM, for men, free on 0800 58 58 58.
