Welcome to the season of Future Makers Brain and Mental Health.
I'm Professor Belinda Lennox. I'm a psychiatrist and a researcher here in Oxford.
And this season, you'll be joining me as we demystify the science behind the most complex object in the known universe,
our brains, and look at the wide reaching impacts of mental illness on individuals and society.
I'll be introducing you to some of Oxford's best academic minds working to solve the greatest challenges in brain and mental health.
And I'll also be speaking to guests from beyond the university to bring their
perspectives and lived experience and get a sense of the impact of what we are doing.
Join us as we discover how Oxford is shaping the future of brain and mental health research.
So welcome to this episode of Future Makers on Suicide and Suicide Prevention.
I'm really delighted to be joined by my guest, Ben West.
And Ben West is a mental health campaigner, a best selling author and social media influencer,
and he has done amazing work, actually, in raising awareness of mental health and particularly around suicide.
So welcome, Ben. It's lovely to be speaking with you.
Thank you so much for having me on, Belinda. And no problem.
And do you just want to start do you just want to tell us a bit about why this topic is so important to you?
Absolutely.
So for first of all, being introduced like that always feels really strange because this is just so unexpected, such an unexpected turn of of my life.
I mean, to think that I'd be on a podcast one day talking to someone from the University of Oxford and being introduced to the social media influence,
which I still it makes me cringe a little bit and, and being, you know, introduces a mental health campaigner suicide prevention campaign.
It's surprising because I really didn't expect any of this to happen.
And I guess to explain my story, I need to go back to when I was 17 years old.
I would say at the time I was in secondary school. I grew up in Kent with two other brothers, and in the middle of nowhere I had Sam,
who was just younger than me, and then Tom, who was younger than Sam. So that was it was three of us.
And we had a great upbringing in Kent, really lovely school, lovely community, lovely place to live, just fields for days.
And it was like a little adventure and you got to live with your best friends.
It was amazing. So I was You get to the point where I'm 17.
I was just starting my A-levels. Sam was doing his GCSE and Tom was in what must have been year seven and the
dynamics sort of started to change and I sort of noticed it changing because that.
Dynamic of being best friends with your brothers and mucking around and and and being really, really close.
It did start to shift and some became in 2017 a little bit more.
Isolated from the the family and from getting involved and and became each started to change a lot and.
He was diagnosed with depression, clinical depression in September 2017.
And I remember being told I never I never spoke to him about it, because for me, I didn't know what Edward Depression was like.
I'm sure most people that are in this situation, especially at that age,
I just I honestly thought my mama told me that he'd been diagnosed as feeling a little bit sad, and so I never spoke to him about it.
And then in January 2018, AA took his own life.
At 15 years old, me and my mom found him.
It was without a doubt the one of the worst things I could ever imagine having to deal with.
It was just awful. And I was a little back.
Now I'm incredibly lucky that I had had first training, so I sort of knew what to do in the in the immediate situation.
But, you know, as a 17 year old boy, you shouldn't be doing CPR on your brother.
It was it was not nice. And he passed away.
And here I am being introduced as suicide prevention campaigner because I think it's just so
desperately sad that a 15 year old boy was put in a situation where he took his own life.
I think that's so sad. And obviously in my work I see that so much nowadays.
I mean, so many people in the same situation. And suicidality and suicidal thoughts are rife in the world at moment and especially in young people.
But for everyone,
it does make me incredibly sad and also incredibly driven to make sure that we can help as many people in someone's mission as possible.
Because, you know, I'd do anything to go back and have a conversation with him and make sure he was okay.
But I can't. What I can do is try my best to get out that influence policy,
work with people and speak to amazing people like you and the guests you've got on and really get brains
together and and really just try and help these people that are so lost and alone and and really struggling.
It's a it's such a powerful and. Absolutely horrendous story, Ben.
You know and I'm feeling, you know, sick just hearing it.
And it's sort of complete tragedies as each and every suicide is for every family.
I mean, and especially at such a young age. Your response to it?
As you say, you've been on an absolute mission to improve the situation and raise awareness.
I mean, just tell us a little bit. How did you sort of take that path?
Well, to be honest, I didn't really have much of a choice.
I think, you know, we talk around this is this is where we started to get into the realm of how how fascinating I find all of this.
And I mentioned at the start, when we were just chatting before we started recording,
I find the mental health world and psychology and emotional absolutely fascinating,
especially going through it myself and now being able to look back and and realise the
complexity of this thing inside my head that was just navigating this awful situation.
And for me. Going into advocacy work and campaigning work and to try and do something positive.
It was almost like a reflex. There was no really no choice involved, and I guess it came out of a few different places.
One was an enormous amount of guilt. Everyone sort of looks at it on the surface and goes, Oh, you're doing such an amazing thing.
You must be so lovely. Actually, it came out of a deep, deep sense of hatred for myself, because just before Sam died, we actually had an argument.
And so the last thing I'd ever say to him was not a nice thing that played on my mind hugely to the point where I thought I'd caused all of it.
So actually doing something good and trying to help other people.
One of the reasons for that was trying to prove to myself and everyone that actually I wasn't such a bad person.
I needed to sort of do something positive to right that wrong.
Obviously, I know now that that's completely misplaced guilt, but at the time it felt like I had to do something good.
But also I saw it speaking to people at school and I realised that genuinely almost
every single person I spoke to had something going on behind the scenes depression,
anxiety, anorexia and bulimia, suicidal thoughts just it felt endless.
The number of conversations I was having with people and a large part of me felt sad about those conversations and wanted to help them,
genuinely wants to help them. And but I think an even larger part of me and I remember talking to a friend of mine at Squash and saying this,
I felt terror because I knew and I said this to this friend, I wouldn't survive losing someone else like this.
And also, I just can't do that. I can't do it again.
And so I think for those sort of mixture of emotions, I just naturally went, wow, we're going to have to try and do something here.
And, you know, it's been almost six years. I know I'm into it now.
It's out. Yeah. Yeah. And what did you find?
Because as you say, it's such a common experience, isn't it?
So many teenagers, young people have mental health problems and actually suicidal thoughts are incredibly common.
And your particular focus is on the response of the education system.
Is it I mean, is it around the school environment? Do you think more could be done?
I do. I think in terms of my terms of campaigning from a policy point of view,
I definitely think the area that I can have certainly I can have most impacts is through policies in in education, in schools and and in universities.
That, for me feels like the dream where I can have the most progress.
You know, everyone can talk about roads of the NHS and roads and all of this and that is important to having that support.
But for me, early intervention, creating better structures in schools for support and education, it just feels like a no brainer.
And also something I can speak to you well,
but it comes from me being at school and one of the first things I did or one of the first events I did was a big charity walk at school,
and it was actually a conversation.
I had that on that walk with some teachers and my teachers, and they turned around me and they were just like, Ben, we see this all the time.
We see self-harm injuries in our classroom all time. We see students in crisis all the time and we have no idea what to say.
And I discovered then that there was no statutory requirement for teachers to be given
any training on mental health in that pgce or any teacher training qualifications.
And that for me struck me as a little bit odd. We know we've saying we know the scale of the mental health crisis.
We know how important it is to have early intervention a young age.
And we've got teachers who want to help, largely want to help and want to intervene, but don't have the training to do so.
And it just felt like a missed opportunity to not implement that training,
which actually is quite basic training into pgce and teacher training standards.
So that really led me on to a more policy driven approach and that sort of for the last five and a half years,
that sort of campaign, every activist policy angle has sort of laid alongside.
You know, the other the other perspective of what I do, which is just trying to get people talking quite positive, meant to have, you know,
events and language about, you know, helping and and how we can talk to each other and volunteering for certain charities and and doing that.
But no, there is a definite policy campaigning line that I go on.
But majority of the stuff I do is around education. For sure.
Yeah. And how have you found your experience of working at a sort of government policy level?
Got to be careful. I say slow. Slow.
It's it's it's incredibly difficult because especially with mental health, it is a it's a health issue, but it's also an education issue.
So when you go to the government, what happens is the Department of Health goes, it's not us.
You've got to be talking to education.
And the Department of Education goes, this is a health problem and you end up getting sort of bounced between the two.
And so it's quite difficult. And with mental health awareness, really amazing space now.
And we're in a great position now where actually it's become very non-partisan.
No one doesn't have a political colour. It's and have a political affinity.
Pretty much everyone across the political spectrum knows that we need to tackle this mental health crisis we're in and stopping suicide.
No one disagrees with that, which is great.
But what we do see is a and what the challenge I have is actually trying to pin down who's responsible for it.
And that's not the people are trying to avoid responsibility necessarily, but it's actually about understanding who who is it?
You know, in a government that's very secular and deals with very different issues, we've got this issue that crosses a gap between two departments.
And that is so let me tell you that it's a headache sometimes, but I.
Oh, it is. And, you know, it's progress and it's it's very slow.
I've been told by numerous civil servants that, you know, we're not going to see legislative statutory statutory change for eight, eight, ten years.
So it's it's a long, long process. But you've got to just give that process a push at the beginning to get it going.
And that's really what I try and do and then just encourage it along a little bit.
Well, completely.
And I suppose, as you say, actually, everybody accepts that this is a hugely important area and you've won over the hearts and minds.
I mean, so actually maybe the legislation might be slow in arriving, but actually the case of need is accepted, isn't it?
And actually the solutions that you're proposing are extremely achievable, aren't they?
You're not asking for a complete restructure of our education system.
You're asking for all teachers to have a level of mental health first aid awareness, which is not unreasonable.
No. And the government agrees, Right. They've already got a programme that trains mental health.
First aid is in schools. I just think it's completely unsustainable and a waste of money.
What they're doing at the moment.
You're basically taking a member of staff out of a school for two days, training them, putting them back into school.
You've got them one mental health first aid in a school of, say, a thousand.
I mean, the impact of that is negligible, right? And that's a huge cost.
And then the time cost as well of taking a teacher out of school for two days.
But we already have a training system in place for every teacher that has to go through qualification.
Why on earth are we not updating the statutory requirements so that we eventually end up
with an education system where everyone has got a basic understanding of this anyway?
You know, that to me is ever what we anything to do with the government in one night.
They want to know if it's cost effective.
That seems like an incredibly cost effective way of revolutionising and putting their foundations into creating amazingly,
you know, mental health friendly. That's an awful phrase.
These mental health friendly schools that are well capable of looking after students mental health and makes sense to me.
And it makes sense to most people because it's a sensible idea.
Completely. Yes. Hello.
I hope you're enjoying this episode of Future Makers Brain and Mental Health.
If you'd like to learn more about our work here in Oxford, head to OCS, dot, AC, dot,
UK forward slash brain or let us know what you think on social media using the hashtag.
Oxford Brain. Do you want to say a bit about how you went about writing your book?
My book. So I guess for me. Suicide is.
He does still have. We talk a lot about stigma and mental health.
I think suicide still has an enormous stigma. People talk about it more than ever, don't get me wrong.
And we can talk about it very openly. But I think the nitty gritty of what it actually is is still quite shrouded in secrecy.
It's still quite a debate. And I found that and I really just wanted.
So in a world of tech talking algorithms and 15 second videos, I really just wanted an opportunity to tell my story from 2017 to now.
Get it up on paper. Give the details. What is it actually like to go through that?
Because we can't have a sensible, proper debate about, you know,
how we move forward with funding and research and education and health without actually understanding what the problem is.
And so I wanted to get it on the record of what it is actually like to go through losing someone so, so especially someone so young.
What my experience is like quite unfiltered in a quite unfiltered way.
But also, you know, I've been through this enormous trauma, an enormous amount of grief.
And I think it's I've learnt a huge amount over the last five years that is just been invaluable to me.
I've gone through something or gone through a childhood trauma,
and actually I've learnt an enormous amount about my own mental health to the point where now I've been working on Twitter for almost six years.
And I wanted to get that on paper because, you know, a lot of the time when you read stuff that's a bit self-help,
it can come across as being very clinical and to a young audience,
anything with clinical white code, it just not it's not going to be read and taken in.
And I thought I'd like to think like I'm relatable, approachable and sort of understandable person.
So, you know, I thought it was important to get my experience down on paper and and try and hopefully
then inspire people to follow suit and take some of my lessons I've learned.
But writing at the price of writing, it was just incredible.
Absolutely incredible. I wrote the book and I called it This book Could Save Your Life because I was just like, you know,
everyone needs to know this stuff and we need to adapt policies, blah, blah, blah to help people.
And I wrote it without realising this, but I think actually it helped me so much.
So, so much. And we talk a lot in sort of mental health and wellbeing around journaling and oh my goodness,
is there power in just sitting there with your thoughts and writing on paper?
And I spent three months just writing about my experience and for the first time a lot of stuff came out for the first time.
It was just an incredible experience for me.
And to then be able to process and things, I'd really stuff to the back of my head and really try to ignore.
Once I felt safe enough and it did take while it just poured out and it was just such a useful experience.
MM Yes, completely powerful to have it written down and having it documented for everyone.
But yes, I love the title of the book, you know, Breaking the Silence around the Mental Health Emergency, because it is a mental health emergency.
And, you know, I was thinking about this with various other guests as to why there isn't just the outrage that,
you know, young people are dying, you know, a leading cause of death in young people.
And it is preventable. You know, why aren't we putting billions into research to work out how we can actually save each and every young person?
Precisely. And I think actually it can be you can be led down a reach of believing that we've
sort of solved this mental health problem and that we've tick the box of awareness.
But I don't think we have an all we have to do.
I mean, you mentioned research, and I would say it's at the way we're talking about it from a research perspective,
this podcast, you know, we've we've made massive strides,
mental health awareness, but the research level, the public donation research level to mental health research is so small,
it's shockingly small compared to the likes of heart disease and cancer.
And the, you know, the big research funders. It's really very small.
And that to me shows me that actually whilst we have a massive awareness of mental health at a very low level of depth,
we really like mental health understanding and, and empathy for what some people actually go through and the effect that it can have on some people.
And that's why I wanted to be really honest about what it was like losing a 15 year old brother to suicide.
I mean, that is shocking, absolutely awful.
And that, for me, is a real big driver of what I do, trying to open conversations, trying to tell the truth about what it's like.
And it's only when you're in this world you realise just how horrific, really awful it can be for certain patients.
I mean, across the board is psychosis.
That's just the most horrific thing to go through, clinical depression and awful things go through.
You talk about I've got friends and people that I know that work in psycho psycho pink units,
psychiatric intensive care units and the stories you hear from that, these are people that that have lost their lives to illness.
And it does sometimes. So like, we're not as angry and not as passionate about this as we should be.
And that, for me, is reflected in in the public research donations and public research budget and even mental health charities.
It's it still feels very top level, you know, very mental health in a very shallow way,
whereas actually the real impact needs to come from anger and passion about the really deep stuff about dealing with psychosis,
dealing with clinical depression, dealing with suicide and putting the funding there.
And so, yeah, part of part of my job, I guess, is highlighting the fact that, hey, suicide is still there.
It's still absolutely awful. And I think.
Do you think more people need to need to be vocal about that and supportive of this issue in the same way that we are incredibly with cancer
and with heart disease and with with those sorts of illnesses that do have a massive amount of public support and public pressure for funding.
And we are yet to see that level of of passion for mental health, which I absolutely think it deserves.
Yeah, completely. And it goes back to what you say is fundamentally, I think it's the stigma and the shame around mental illness.
You know, people have feelings of guilt. I mean, you know, and they blame themselves and family members.
I mean, your response that you described. Absolutely.
In my experience is, you know, it's pretty universal and and it's just completely different to other forms of, you know, serious illness.
I mean, we really need to to grasp.
But I mean, that's almost the biggest issue from my point of view. Yeah, absolutely.
And you know what? I'm so I'm an engineer by by my that's what I once you need to do.
I've worked in sort of engineering. I feel like I was like, born to do that job.
I love Lego. And then I worked in a boatyard for a few years.
I was engine one. And, you know, I'm not working in engineering now, but I still have that mind and I like to fix problems.
I wouldn't be working in this if I didn't think we're on the cusp of really
creating massive progress and it's a solvable issue and that's really positive.
It's all very incredibly solvable. And actually psychosis is a great example of that.
The progress we've made in terms of treating psychosis is absolutely amazing.
We can very confidently treat early onset psychosis pretty it's pretty easy right now.
And that, I think, should give so many people hope that there are people out there doing an amazing amount of research.
There are lots and lots of there's lots and lots of things happening and the solution is almost there.
But it's a case of bringing it all together.
We need the education piece, we need the health piece and the research piece and it all together and the stigma bashing stuff.
I'm an engineer. Like I wouldn't be wasting six years of my life trying to push for less if I didn't think anything was going to change.
I have a lot of hope for the next decade and two decades for how much is genuinely going to change.
And and it just it only takes a flick on Google to see a search on Google to see just how many really exciting projects are
going on at the moment that could absolutely change people's lives and and hopefully save a lot of people's lives as well.
Absolutely. Do you want to tell us a bit more about the work you're doing with businesses like Wagamama, for example?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, say businesses, Where do we start with this?
There's a huge push at the moment for people to deal with internal stuff, mental health, huge push, rightly so,
because employees know that they deserve to be looked after by their employer,
and employers also want to help keep their staff and keep their staff happy and productive.
The problem is not a lot of people really understand how they're doing it.
And I guess for me, you know, I've always just been sort of the person that likes to chat to people and likes to listen.
And again, engineering brain likes to solve problems. And so I've worked with a few companies now on really trying to understand how to
how businesses can help their employees and what are some of the problems there.
And my biggest client and I actually adore them. In fact, actually it was after Sam died, I didn't eat anything and it was the first meal I had.
And after that it was the first bit of food I kept down and it was a wagamama and so it feels very full circle.
Nice to be working so closely with them.
But really it's it's about trying to help staff and also trying to help society through the partnership with Wagamama and.
Especially in the hospitality industry. It's got it's not got a very good history of mental health and being mentally positive place to work.
So really trying to come up with solutions to that, work with that people team.
And it's obvious things like collecting data and understanding what people are dealing with and actually, you know, cost of living.
How do we know whether the cost of living crisis is something that we need to to tackle internally with our asking?
It seems obvious, right? But how do we know that the cost of living crisis is something we need to deal with internally?
Or is it actually that people are struggling with another issue?
You don't know if you didn't ask, and that was one of the early things I started with.
But it's a journey, and I think for me it's always been a case of just bringing my story to the table.
As soon as you introduce yourself and you say, This is why I'm doing this.
I lost my brother. All the barriers are down. Everyone's happy to talk about the deepest, darkest things about life,
which is great because what it means I can have really vulnerable conversations with people and understand actually how we can help going forwards.
And so, yeah, I do love working with our great team and they're trying their best in a really, really challenging industry at the moment.
Hospitality is just I mean, talk about COVID and what it did to us today.
It's, it's, it's a very, very challenging industry to work in.
So we really are trying to understand that and help, but that my mission is pretty simple.
I'm not going and I'm going to do this for a very, very long time. I don't think anyone should want to kill themselves.
I don't think anyone should have to die from suicide.
I don't actually think anyone should have to face depression and face long bouts of mental illness.
It shouldn't be the case that we have that happen in the society.
So I'm going to do what I can to help on a personal level, on a professional level,
on a government level, to try my very best alongside an amazing sector to improve this around.
Wow. Well, thank you, Ben, for your energy, your optimism, your absolute inspirational level of drive.
I mean, you know. Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future Makers Brain and Mental Health.
You can find more episodes of future makers wherever you get your podcasts and more on Oxford's research at Oxford.
AC DC's UK Forward Slash Brain. Thanks for listening.