Mental Health Awareness Week

Today marks the start of Mental Health Awareness Week and although we believe that everyone should be aware of theirs and other peoples mental health all year round, we thought it would be a good idea to reintroduce ‘For Men To Talk’ and what we bring to men locally.

The Mental Health Foundation campaign this year focuses on loneliness, with the hashtag #IveBeenThere. It will hopefully give a chance for us all to share our experiences and feel a little less alone with our thoughts.

About For Men To Talk

‘For Men To Talk’ is a Community Interest Company, a non-charitable limited company, which means that we provide a benefit to the community and report back on this every year to Companies House.

About the Founder   

Luke Newman lives in Potton, Bedfordshire. He has personally suffered for a number of years with grief and anxiety since losing his mother, aged 54, and sister, 44, both to cancer. However, he feels fortunate that he could admit my illness, as sadly a lot of men are not able to do so without the support that a group like ‘For Men To Talk’ provides.   

Having already been through counselling and therapy, Luke recognised that there weren’t any groups for men to simply talk. This was a major driver in him founding the ‘For Men To Talk in December 2019, giving men who are suffering with anxiety, depression and grief the opportunity to talk with other fellow sufferers about their situation, provide support for each other and improve their well-being.    

They started with just one group, face-to-face and now have an average total of 15 men attending per meeting, which of course went virtual during the pandemic.  

As things are returning to normal, ‘For Men To Talk’ meetings remain virtually every Wednesday as well as back to physical meetings. 

Meetings

• 1 x Virtual Group Meeting per week
• 2 x Physical Group Meetings per month at The Crown Hotel (Wetherspoon) in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire  
• 1 x Physical Group Meeting per month at St Neots Golf Club in Cambridgeshire
• 1 x Physical Group Meeting per month at The Cambridge Belfry in Cambourne, Cambridgeshire1 x Group ‘For Men To Talk… and Walk’ per month. Starting at Jones’ Cafe in Biggleswade, Bedfordshire  

Awareness

‘For Men To Talk’ raises awareness of mental health by:   

• Encouraging men to undertake the four pillars of wellbeing, which are sleep, exercise, stress management and nutrition, to improve mental health.   
• Posting daily supportive social media quotes accompanied by a photo. This is designed to motivate and maintain positive mental health.   
• Providing safe, supportive and confidential environments where men can talk freely about their mental health illness.   
• Providing information recognising the symptoms of male cancers.   
• Keep the ‘For Men To Talk’ website updated, with continual updates. This includes blogs discussing various issues of mental health for men.   

The Mental Health Moles Book

Luke Newman has designed, written and self-published a book titled ‘The Mental Health Moles’, which is suitable for men, women, boys and girls of all ages. He wrote this book to raise awareness of mental health for men, about ‘For Men To Talk’ and to raise much needed revenue for our early days of the CIC. He undertook a very successful crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for the first print of the book, and they are now sold on Amazon Kindle and print, via market stalls and craft fayres. He has also been approached to talk about the book at local schools. All profits go to ‘For Men To Talk’.   

Recently, ‘For Men To Talk’ has received financial funding from The Heads-Up community grant fund which is part of BLMK ICS NHS England Suicide Prevention Funding. See https://bbc.in/3Np6Rjt for further information

For further information on all of the above, please contact ‘For Men To Talk’ on formentotalk@hotmail.com or via 07709 446480.