Jonny Benjamin MBE
Jonny Benjamin MBE is an author and founder of youth mental health charity, Beyond. This organisation exists to challenge and change the mental health status quo. They raise money ...
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Have you met Prince William?
I have met Prince William and his wife Catherine, on a number of occasions, and it's amazing to hear their sort of passion when it comes to mental health and suicide prevention. It feels like a course that they're really, really committed to, and it's just great to have people with their profile and influence really invested in both mental health and suicide prevention.
Is mental health awareness needed in schools?
I think schools, colleges, universities needs to be doing a lot more when it comes to mental health, but also, yeah, suicide prevention. The statistic that always really gets me is that over 200 school children take their own lives every single year, which is just, it is just too tragic. That number should be zero. So yeah, schools, colleges, universities, they need to be doing so much more, but it needs to come from the top. It needs to come from government. There's a lot, I think that really needs to change within our education system. A lot that needs to change.
What is suicide prevention?
I think suicide prevention, it means different things to different people. For me, suicide prevention is about doing everything that we can to stop people from taking their own lives. Don't think we do enough in terms of suicide prevention. I think it's still so misunderstood, the whole topic. There's not enough sort of investment in things like suicide prevention. I think people just don't want to really address the issue. It's so much easier for people to address health issues, like things like cancer. People can maybe get their heads around that, but people can't get their heads around suicide prevention. And so I think, yeah, we've still got a long way to go. A long way to go.