Personal Stories

Mike, Wales

Mike had a difficult young life. When he was six, his father died. Unable to cope with his pain and loss, Mike began to pull out clumps of his own hair. Despite such an obvious expression of unhappiness, Mike never received any help for his depression.

Things deteriorated further when Mike’s mother lost a long battle against cancer when he was 18. Alone, Mike struggled to cope with the loss of his parents and became plagued with severe depression. Finally, in his late teens, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

Throughout Mike’s 20s and 30s life remained very difficult. He particularly found it hard to cope with too much noise or stress, problems that made it impossible for him to hold down a job.

That was until Mike was wandering aimlessly around Cardiff in July 2008 and came across a Cardiff Mind open day in a café. There, he was told about the mental health charity’s Greenscape gardening project, which was funded by Comic Relief.

Mike soon began to volunteer for Greenscape and eventually became a director of the enterprise. He now runs a maintenance van with another volunteer and assists elderly people with their gardens.

Thanks to the combination of friendship, fresh air and exercise, Mike’s psychotic episodes are far less frequent and he’s happy for the first time in his life. Mike says, “I go to bed at night looking forward to going to work the next day.”