lordsummit
Moderator
Hi guys, I did this last year, and I hope you won't mind me doing it again. If you want the tl;dr it's at the bottom.
I've been working with young people all my working life, and as I get older I become more and more aware of how challenging the world is becoming for them, and the impact it has on their mental health. Social media to a young mind is in my opinion the devil, but you try keeping them away from it. Then there's the way family life has changed, poverty, the pressure on parents due to crappy working hours, horrible housing, and you could forget we're in the 21st century.
Add to this the pressure from austerity, the reduction of services from the NHS, the difficulty in accessing CAMHS, two years is not uncommon unless things have already reached crisis point. It's a system that lets manageable problems turn into a crisis.
I have some skin in this game. I've had my issues, I'm doing well now, I found something that helped me. I've turned my life around in many ways, not least losing five stone and a half stone and getting out doing something I find rewarding. So I'm trying to use what is helping me to help a charity that I am passionate about.
Papyrus is committed to helping prevent suicide in young people. They define young as 35 or under. There may well be some of us here who they could help. They offer help and support with the issues young people face. They run the Hopeline, this provides help for young people or their friends and family if they are worried about a young person. I've had two dear friends one who lost a child and the other a brother to suicide. One of my friends also committed suicide. None of us had guessed or knew. It's such a tragic waste of life.
Anyway, I've been on something of a journey, three years ago I was an exceedingly unfit, lardy nearly 17 stone. It took me twelve months to get round a Parkrun without stopping, a year later I did my first 10k, and then later that year a second. This year I've been training hard and do the Great North Run on the 8th of September. I'm doing it for Papyrus, it's not easy, 13.2miles is a long way, I'd hoped to do it in about 2 hours, but I'm looking at 2h 15 now, a virus wiped out nearly two weeks of training, and I'm still getting back on it. I hope some of you might make a donation, our young people are important.
Thanks
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/richard-lord11
I've been working with young people all my working life, and as I get older I become more and more aware of how challenging the world is becoming for them, and the impact it has on their mental health. Social media to a young mind is in my opinion the devil, but you try keeping them away from it. Then there's the way family life has changed, poverty, the pressure on parents due to crappy working hours, horrible housing, and you could forget we're in the 21st century.
Add to this the pressure from austerity, the reduction of services from the NHS, the difficulty in accessing CAMHS, two years is not uncommon unless things have already reached crisis point. It's a system that lets manageable problems turn into a crisis.
I have some skin in this game. I've had my issues, I'm doing well now, I found something that helped me. I've turned my life around in many ways, not least losing five stone and a half stone and getting out doing something I find rewarding. So I'm trying to use what is helping me to help a charity that I am passionate about.
Papyrus is committed to helping prevent suicide in young people. They define young as 35 or under. There may well be some of us here who they could help. They offer help and support with the issues young people face. They run the Hopeline, this provides help for young people or their friends and family if they are worried about a young person. I've had two dear friends one who lost a child and the other a brother to suicide. One of my friends also committed suicide. None of us had guessed or knew. It's such a tragic waste of life.
Anyway, I've been on something of a journey, three years ago I was an exceedingly unfit, lardy nearly 17 stone. It took me twelve months to get round a Parkrun without stopping, a year later I did my first 10k, and then later that year a second. This year I've been training hard and do the Great North Run on the 8th of September. I'm doing it for Papyrus, it's not easy, 13.2miles is a long way, I'd hoped to do it in about 2 hours, but I'm looking at 2h 15 now, a virus wiped out nearly two weeks of training, and I'm still getting back on it. I hope some of you might make a donation, our young people are important.
Thanks
https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/richard-lord11