When Aidan was fifteen years old he became very anxious and depressed after a health scare. He had convinced himself that he was suffering from a brain tumour after weeks of headaches and feeling ill. At the time he was also doing his GCSE’s, which added to the stress he was feeling. ‘Every day I was crying, I had stress headaches and I was constantly thinking about being ill. I didn’t want to tell my friends and family as they were all really busy and I didn’t want to add my problems to their own.’

Eventually Aidan admitted to his family how he was feeling and they were very supportive. They encouraged him to go to his GP and after several visits Aidan was reassured about his health and was able to deal much better with his exams. However he feels that young people find it very difficult speak out. ‘When you are dealing with a problem it would be really helpful to have somewhere else to go if you don’t feel able to talk to your doctor or family. I wish when I was stressed that I’d had somewhere I could go for help so that I hadn’t felt so alone.’

He is now passionate about helping to raise awareness about young people’s mental health and the importance of being more open about the issues young people struggle with. He signed-up to train as a mentor when MindFull came to his school in London and has recently helped launched the mentoring sessions at his school, which run every day at break times. ‘The training was brilliant because I got to really understand how to talk to people about mental health issues. A lot of people come to us about things like name-calling or family issues and we can help them because we have been through it ourselves and had the training. We are confident about flagging up certain issues to our teachers and we have supervision so that we get support as well.’

Aidan is now a MindFull Life Mentor and is committed to helping with the MindFull FunFairs supported by Time to Change.