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Dave Chase knew he had to do something to get Chelmsford talking after two of his close friends took their own lives.

He felt powerless watching those he cared about slip away from him, and he was determined to stop this happening.

Following a spate of suicides in Chelmsford two years ago, Dave set up MATES, a group designed to provide confidential support and advice for those living in Essex and beyond.

Today, more than 1,000 people now benefit from the invaluable service Dave and the other ambassadors provide every single day.

For this group of inspirational people, talking to someone could be the difference between life and death.

EssexLive spoke to Dave, Laurence, Matt, Lee, Kate and Ian - six members of MATES who are using their own battles with mental health to help others feel better.

These are their stories.

Help is out there Each and every one of us has mental health, and one in four of us are likely to experience mental illness at some point in our lives. Sadly, the current global crisis is likely to exacerbate the problems people may already be experiencing and create problems where before there were none. But help is out there, and support is available in many different forms. Throughout this article, there will be links to groups and organisations out there who can help you, including MATES themselves. Remember, it's okay to not be okay.

Dave Chase - the man behind the mental health community

(Image: MATES)

Managing director Dave, 41, founded the group back in 2018 after losing two friends to suicide.

He said: “I felt I needed to do something about stopping it, if I could just stop one person from going down that same line then that’s something I wanted to achieve.

“I spent about three years watching one of my very close friend’s health decline, and being the person they trusted to talk to about their depression and anxiety, watching that on a day to day basis whilst standing powerless trying to help them, it’s such a horrific experience."

Dave became a mental health first aider as part of his work in the construction industry, but he soon decided to expand that into a support group of his own.

He said: “I asked myself why am I looking into this? Why doesn’t everyone just know? We never get taught at school how to look for signs in ourselves and our family, and it’s often too long down the line for us having it or recognising the signs.

“I wanted to replicate a similar thing out of work so I came up with the idea of a private chat room, that’s where MATES came from.

“In August 2018 a good close friend from our immediate group took his own life and seeing the effect that had on our community made me more determined to do something to stop this happening.

“I rolled out MATES and for the first year we did it online, we didn’t do meet ups. But so many amazing people were contacting us privately to say what a difference it made to their lives.”

MATES was off and running, and it's now much more than just an online support group.

The group holds four weekly meet-up sessions and also takes its message of ‘conversations change lives’ into schools, work places and sports teams, targeting people of all ages and backgrounds.

And MATES now has Community Interest Company status, meaning any money raised through their work is invested straight back into the project to keep supporting those in need.

The silent killer

(Image: MATES)

Eight months after the group was founded, another two people within the local Chelmsford community took their own lives.

“It just became every time you opened the paper someone else locally had taken their own life," Dave said.

"You see the people you know about, what you don’t see is the full stats and the full story of how many people have actually taken their own life.

"One undertaker group said in that week that they’d had five other people in that age range but the families had chosen not to talk about it, which they have every right not to do. But you don’t really see the full picture.

“In the 19-50 age range, the biggest killer of males is suicide. It’s a third higher in the construction industry which I work in and I want to make sure this support is in place for them.

“If you’re a man within that age range, the most likely way you’re going to leave this planet is by taking your own life.

“It’s still very high for women but they talk about things and get things off their chest, and the suicide rates reflect that.”

How the coronavirus outbreak has impacted the group

(Image: MATES)

During its first year, MATES was just an online community where people could join a private Facebook group to talk, or even just listen to others discuss their mental health.

But from last year, the group began organising a variety of meet-ups and activities to give people the chance to interact with each other in person and share their experiences.

“It’s so important with things like anxiety to stop the loneliness and keeping yourself to yourself and bottling things up,” Dave explained. “We did a weekly meet up in a local pub and a weekly walk - both have been really successful.

“People just come over and break up into little groups, you don’t have to speak about anything, just come for the first few weeks and listen and get used to the people who are there.

MATES - The events Every week, MATES hold four key events in Chelmsford for members to attend. Due to the coronavirus outbreak, these have been temporarily put on hold as the group follows government's guidance on isolation, but they will resume as soon as it is safe to do so. The events are: Every Tuesday - Drop in sessions at the United Brethren pub, New Writtle Street (from 7pm)

Every Thursday - Football Fitness Club in Chelmer Park, Chelmsford (from 8pm)

Every Saturday - Chelmsford parkrun (from 8.50am)

Every Sunday - Health and wellbeing walk in Hylands Park (from 9am)

“What I look at in the statistics is the interaction rate. We always have over a 90 per cent interaction rate for every 28 days, so of the 1,096 people we have today, 900 to 950 would have interacted with each other in the previous 28 days.

“It’s a live group and people are actually doing things. Some people come to us and say they’ve never written anything in the group but the fact they know it’s there actually helps them because if they do need to speak to someone they just need to open that group up.”

Due to the recent coronavirus outbreak, the group’s weekly meet-up sessions have been temporarily put on hold.

But Dave and the other ambassadors have come up with a brilliant way of still communicating with the group every single day.

The group, led by Dave and Laurence, are now running daily Facebook Live streams at 7pm within the online community to discuss topics and any issues the members want to raise, either publicly or privately.

The importance of talking

When the group first started, MATES had six or seven ambassadors, each designed to be a port of call and friendly face to support others within the group.

Now, two years on, there are more than 30 ambassadors working within the community.

“Look at the stats, Dave said. “If you have a broken leg you wouldn’t ever consider hiding it, and it’s the same with mental illness, there’s no logical reason to try to hide it.

“This is the norm, to open up and talk, it’s a safe community. Come in and watch how people interact with each other and are honest. That may really help you because you’ll see how people are helping themselves and you can see their progress.

“It’s about your quality of life, all that could possibly happen is you get a better quality of life and you get your life back on track. We are your mates.

“Ask ‘how are you?’ That’s all you’ve got to do, seeing people getting things off their chest, stuff they’ve had bottled up for years, that’s 50 per cent of the problem resolved.”

The struggles of opening up about the loss of a brother

(Image: MATES)

Seven years ago, Laurence Chung's brother Warren took his own life.

For years, he and his family didn't talk about their loss, and it wasn't until he became part of MATES that he realised the huge benefits of opening up.

He went to school with Dave in Chelmsford, and now Laurence, 41, is the group’s strategic director.

“When my brother died I felt I had a decent understanding of how mental health worked and that I was quite connected to feelings but I didn't see it,” he said.

“He was at my house the day he took his own life, he was in a good mood and we’d been working on some plans for buying a property and developing it.

“He was an architect by trade and we spent the whole weekend on it, and we had my parents over to borrow some money and to pull together some resources.

“I thought tomorrow could be the next step and he was quite buoyant. Maybe looking back, some of the pressures of that might have contributed.”

Later that day, Warren went to sleep on the sofa but didn't wake up. It wasn't until the next day when Laurence found out.

Warren had been struggling with his mental health and was known to local services.

“You kick yourself,” Laurence said. “One of the jobs for that morning was writing to the mental health teams about what they were doing, he was being moved from place to place.

“But with suicide there are always lots of regrets and unanswered questions.”

The documentary that showed him the light

It took Laurence and his family several years to find a way to talk about Warren’s death.

He said: “A lot of the conversation we didn’t have as a family was suicide, we just said he died and a lot of people didn’t really know any detail about it.

“It wasn’t until the last 18 months that I found that because we didn’t have a conversation and properly grieve for it, we couldn't fully discuss things. I’ve contributed to that whole stigma of not talking about mental health.

“The thing that prompted me was in November 2018 when I went to see a film called ‘Evelyn’ about a director called Orlando von Einsiedel.

“He lost his brother to suicide when they were a lot younger and for 12 years they didn’t talk about it, they did exactly the same thing we did and the whole documentary was about going to places they went as a family and just walking and talking.

“Before watching I had this cloak of invincibility, thinking I could deal with anything, and I sat watching that film and things made me cry, and the guy sitting next to me was crying at the same things.

“Other people are dealing with these emotions, I’m not special. It was a bit of a light bulb moment un-boxing the feelings in my head.”

After watching the film, Laurence became more involved in MATES. He even set up a screening of the film for others to see, including his parents.

"My parents came and they spoke about things they'd never talked publicly about," he explained. "It changed things."

Tackling the stigma

(Image: MATES)

With mental health, particularly with men, there's a stigma that is often attached to it.

The idea that men are too strong or too proud to open up about their feelings is undoubtedly one of the main reasons why male suicides is disproportionately higher than female suicides.

And as Laurence explains, it can often be a trait that’s ingrained in men from a young age.

He said: “There’s a bigger awareness and a lot of people have to be open to listening to that.

“You’re trained from a very young age to be the man about the house, look after mum, you're trained to put a lid on your emotions and now we're of the age where we’re becoming parents and that’s exposing their issues as well.

“You’ve grown up with it so to reverse-engineer that is quite a difficult thing.

“Quite often you have to do something for yourself, develop your passions to help your mental health and give yourself some direction.

“It helps you find purpose and if you can do that you’re on the way to some peace.”

How witnessing a suicide at a train station changed Matt's life

(Image: MATES)

Around four years ago, Matt Smith witnessed someone take their own life at an Essex train station.

He was standing on the platform when he saw what was about to happen. He tried grabbing the person’s shoulder, but their coat slipped out from his grasp.

The 44-year-old, from Chelmsford, who has also lost three relatives to suicide, said it’s a moment that has played on his mind ever since.

“I have regular nightmares, he said. "I have PTSD and what I should have done is seek help at the time, but I didn’t get any counselling or try to see anyone.

“I sunk into depression and things weren’t going right and it cost me my marriage. After that I kicked myself into getting help.”

Since the incident at the train station, Matt has struggled to escape the constant nightmares.

“It’s visions, seeing the woman constantly,” he said. “I never got a chance to see her face, it was like a faceless person.

“She would just be there and bug me to a point where I’d wake up at 1am or 2am and just leave the house. It got to a point where I wouldn’t want to sleep.

"Last August I had a massive breakdown and needed to get some help. The hospital sent someone over to talk to me, I had home visits and medication.

“Apart from a minor blip since then I’ve been okay.”

Matt is now leaving his job in London to start bereavement counselling for the first time in order to prioritise his health and wellbeing.

Becoming an ambassador to help others

(Image: MATES)

Matt was at his lowest point last August when he was told about MATES.

He dived straight into many of the weekly events and is now a positive mental health ambassador for the group.

He said: “It only took me a few weeks to really appreciate everything they were doing and took it upon myself to reach out to others.

“People share things with me, even today I’ve messaged three or four people within the group seeing how their day has been."

Matt was also part of the group’s 20-mile Lost Hours Walk in London last year, organised by Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM).

A total of 17 members took to the capital’s streets overnight and raised more than £6,000 for charity.

When Matt was approached by Dave to become an ambassador for the group, he didn't hesitate.

“Part of the reason is that I’m ever present,” Matt said. “It’s someone out there for people to contact, they might not want to put something on the group but they might want to speak to that person.

“A couple of people might have suffered from alcoholism or drug addiction and you know these people have too so they can help you.

“I said yes straight away, I go to every walk, maybe not the pub every time but that will change with me leaving work, I will be able to put my face back out there again."

Matt has one simple message that he would encourage anyway struggling with their mental health to consider.

He said: “The first thing I say is 'Pick up the phone or send a message.' If I have a wobble the first thing I do is send a message, and someone comes back within a minute.

“That can be the difference between being here and not being here. Reach out, we have the public group where there are contact details but we have the private one too.

“Even if it’s to Samaritans or Mind, we want everyone to be here. It doesn’t always stop after that message, you’ll always have someone looking out for you.”

How balancing work and family life took its toll on Lee

(Image: MATES)

For outsiders, it may look like Lee Prile has the perfect life.

He has run the Wheatsheaf pub in Chelmsford city centre for 14 years, and he's married with four children and a dog.

But for years, the 42-year-old was battling mental health struggles of his own.

“I struggled balancing being a father of four with running a stressful business and it took its toll on me,” he said. “I was taking anti-anxiety tablets four or five years ago because there was constant worry all the time.

“Worries in the business at the time, the rent was quite high, I had Sky and BT Sport bills, business rates, and it affected my mental health and made me ill.

“The Wheatsheaf is typically a male-orientated pub because of the football, rugby and boxing. I’m seen as this big strong person with a boxing belt for my charity matches. In my own head I had to be this big strong person at the time and I was hiding behind it.

“I was trying to be this big strong dad and son to my parents who are both terminally ill. I didn’t even tell my mum and dad until it got to the point where it had to come out. "

Finding an escape in MATES

Towards the end of 2019, Lee became an active member of the group.

Today, the Chelmsford local is a positive mental health champion for MATES, meaning he is now using his own experiences to support those in his shoes.

“I was able to be open and talk about the problems I had within a confidential group of like-minded people without being judged,” he said. “When I joined MATES I had a bit of a moment.

“Dave said that I then started to open up quite a lot. He invited a few people to discuss problems amongst other members of the group and I was able to open up and tell my story.

(Image: MATES)

“I helped a lot of other people and Dave said how I was an amazingly strong man. I had a lack of self confidence and I kept being told I was this amazing strong person and I didn't believe it.

“At the time I started to blame myself for the pub, but it was just a difficult time for the pub industry.

“I was trying to be the best dad I could be, taking my son to Ipswich for football three times a week and three other kids, trying to balance them all and doing the best I could.”

‘Being open is the best way forward’

The business issues Lee was facing have now gone, largely because of the work he’s done behind the scenes.

He says it’s enabled him to “fix himself“ and change his lifestyle.

“I eat a bit healthier and I’ve learned how to deal with myself,” he said. “If I get worked up I know how to deal with it. If there’s a problem, there’s nothing I can do about it.

“Without Dave, he’s an incredible man with what he’s doing. He works full-time himself and he’s saved me, the whole of MATES have."

Lee says that it's not weak to open up to people, adding that it's the 'best way forward.'

“Those other people are there to help," he said.

Lee explained that after the Wheatsheaf has undergone a four-week restoration period and is reopened to the public, it will become a social hub for the MATES community.

How losing her mum sent Kate into a long spiral of anxiety and depression

(Image: MATES)

MATES isn’t just for men.

In fact, around 50 per cent of the group’s members are female, showing just how important it is to target and support everyone.

Kate, now 39, was just 21-years-old when she lost her mum following a long battle with cancer.

It sent her into a period of anxiety and depression, where it felt like a “black cloud” was hanging over her during the most important years of her life.

“I suffered my own challenges in the past, mostly as a young person,” Kate said. “My mum had cancer from when I was 14 for seven or eight years.

“It was a critical time trying to make decisions for my life, I felt like I didn't learn how to turn into an adult. She passed away when I was 21, leaving a huge gap in my life.

“I took a negative path overcome by grief, symptoms of depression and anxiety. I went off the road a bit. I didn’t have my mum around to help me and I didn’t know what to do."

‘I had a really black cloud over me'

Around the time of losing her mum, Kate was studying at university.

But her mental health was putting a massive strain on her studies, and on the rest of her life.

She said: “I felt like I had a really black cloud over me all the time. Sometimes the anxiety meant I was really overwhelmed with stuff.

“I would always give up, that was my pattern. I had a perfect excuse because I could pull out that my mum died, almost a ticket to say it’s okay to give up and that’s what I used.

“When I reflect back, I used it as a victim and it was easy and I got into that habit, but it was kind of crazy to think I didn’t need to do that.”

Kate, who also lives in Chelmsford, is now a Youth Coach running wellbeing programmes in schools and the community, supporting others to make positive changes in their lives.

She has two children and has been an active part of MATES since the beginning.

A space for people to talk

When there were just four or five group members, Kate was drafted in.

Two years on, she is now a positive mental health ambassador for the group.

She said: “At the beginning we shared it amongst our friends and we would have our friends talking more about their mental health and that would be great, and then it went completely huge and got shared more and more.

“My transformation happened before MATES but I’ve shared my story more than I ever have done before so it has helped me in that way, to see it from a different perspective. It’s allowed me to help other people."

While there is very much a stigma surrounding men and their mental health, it’s becoming increasingly clear, especially during these tough times, that we need to think about how women are coping.

Kate said: “It’s brilliant people are sharing things but that’s now a pressure for parents and the mental health of mums is something we really need to consider, as well as the obvious pre and postnatal depressions for mums that aren't really talked about.

"We are encouraging women to start having conversations about their mental health on our Facebook page.

"Also, by using our events, meet ups and online video talks, we are here to help our community to look at ways they can find support by signposting them to other agencies and professionals as well as discuss ideas that have helped us.

"For me, it's all about my mindset and challenging perspective as to what's really going on. I have also found mindfulness, exercise and understanding how nutrition affects my mood, to hugely help my mental health."

How speaking to a stranger in the park helped Ian

(Image: MATES)

This time last year, Ian McGuire hit a low point in his life.

The 43-year-old, from Chelmsford, was working a stressful job and without realising it he was isolating himself from the world.

"I was really low and I effectively had a breakdown," he said. "I thought I can’t take this standard of living anymore, I’m in a bad place and I can’t carry on feeling like this.

"I hit low and that kicked into depression and I became depressed, for quite a short period, maybe a couple of weeks when I felt down about things.

"I started reaching out for resources and I stumbled across MATES as a group of like-minded people. They were doing the walks and the pub chats and I got myself involved in that world."

On his first visit to the group's weekly walk in Hylands Park, Ian was paired up with Laurence. That was the first time he spoke to a stranger about his mental ill health.

He said: "The first person I spoke to meaningfully was Laurence and we had that two-hour conversation walking around the park talking about my feelings and why I felt down and depressed, and that started the process of realising there are other people who have gone through these things.

"From there I started to go along regularly to the weekend walks at Hylands and the pub drop ins. I was welcomed into that environment where it’s not judgemental and you could say what you want because you know it’s confidential.

Just a year after hitting the lowest point in his life, Ian is now a positive mental health ambassador for the group.

'You feel that you're quite alone with things'

Ian made the decision to resign from his job in financial services after reaching his lowest ebb.

"I felt quite isolated and lonely and when a bout kicks in you feel quite hopeless and you forget how it feels to not be depressed," he said. "The loneliness and lack of self worth, it’s a really difficult one but, although my family is fantastic, I wasn’t enjoying the time with them as I do now.

"You feel that you're quite alone with things which is why I really wanted to reach out to build that connection with living.

"I have a wife and two young children. I’ve been really fortunate with my family and their support and one thing I was very keen to do was be open with my family and my children and we spoke about why I wasn’t feeling very well, but in language they could understand.

"I wanted to seek a new career in charity work with mental health. It took a lot of perseverance and I took some knock-backs on the way but I now work for CALM.

"I’m still in the early phases there but I’m really really enjoying it. I’m getting something from my job which I was struggling to do before."

'A sacred forum'

According to Ian, the support that MATES provides can be life-changing.

"What makes MATES a community is that it's a place for you to offload all the worry, concern and anxiety into a non-judgemental environment where no one is going to criticise or belittle you," Ian said. "It’s like a sacred forum.

"It’s totally confidential. I found with Laurence who was a complete stranger and now is a very good friend, talking to a stranger can be so helpful because they don’t know anything about you. You can try to offload your worries to them.

"It’s really scary, it takes a lot to rock up to a park or a pub on your own and meet strangers so if you get the courage it can change your life because you can confide in people who really care."