Mental Health Awareness Awards Event

Mental Illness affects 1 in 4 people. So many people are going through daily battles in their own minds and still manage to go on to do amazing things and help others.  

Help us raise funds to hold an event that recognises, inspires and offers hope to those with a mental illness.

I am a mental health campaigner and someone that tries to do what I can to raise awareness on mental illness.  
I am extremely passionate about mental health and promoting awareness,

I have a long history with mental illness including self harm, anorexia, anxiety and bipolar disorder. 
My own journey spanning nearly 20 years has included 6 hospital admissions for both anorexia and severe depression and I never thought I would be free. 

I had a huge battle with the system to try and get the correct help and found both some diamond Doctors and doctors that should never have spoken to me the way that they did.

I finally after many years started to get better and while any mental illness is never perfect I realised that I wanted to live. I realised It was possible and I realised there was hope. 

I now campaign by doing my own mental health awareness projects which you can see on my website HERE including sending happy post to those feeling hopeless and various displays to raise awareness and create conversation around mental health.
I get involved with other charities such as Time To Change and have been involved in other peoples mental health projects as well as recently being part of the Lloyds bank #GetTheInsideOut campaign which you can also see on my website 



I also have a group called Midlands Messages Of Hope which was created after a project where I hung 150 notes of hope to a bridge known for people ending their lives and two local councillors coming on board to back me. 

As part of this I am now organising a mental health awareness event named after my book title which is also in the process of being published called "In Bloom Not Broken" as I believe we are all simply in bloom, no one is broken beyond repair.

The aim of this event is to both recognise those that have overcome adversity and helped others, recognise that have gone above and beyond to help those with mental illness with awards and to also inspire and offer hope by having people speak about their own journeys, their own stories and to create an event within the Midlands (Setting will be Birmingham based) that will uplift and offer hope to show that recovery is possible and that there is always hope and the possibility of things getting better. 

I think it's always easy to focus on the negatives of mental illness and so I want to create something that evokes positivity and have an event where people leave being recognised for their achievements and feeling inspired. 

With this event will also come cost, all of my projects generally come out of predominantly my own pocket but this will obviously be bigger than I alone can afford and so I am fundraising towards the costs of this event to enable it to become a reality and to enable it to be the best that it can be.

This event will not only benefit the people that attend but as I have found out with my other projects the people that it reached via social media and potential newspaper and radio coverage where it also creates further conversation around mental health. 

I hope that this will be an event that really offers hope and inspiration to others that no matter what you are going through it can and does get better, that people are not alone in what they are feeling and most importantly that it's okay to talk. 

Every donation no matter how small will go towards this event and be hugely appreciated. 

"Don't be ashamed of your story, one day it will inspire others"