Housebuilder partners with mental health charity

It’s one of three charities a team from the St Asaph-based business is raising money for with a team set to tackle the Three Peaks next month.

The charity’s CEO and founder Jake Mills spoke at the homebuilder’s supply chain conference.

“I was a comedian before – I got into mental health because of my own lived experience. I’d started to struggle myself and didn’t seek help or support and attempted to take my own life,” Jake recalled.

“I started to talk publicly about my struggles and every time I did people got in touch asking for help and support. I realised there was huge power in lived experience because people kept coming to me asking for help and many people were going through the same thing thinking they were the only ones.”

Jake said he had no idea how to help people find support so started putting a list of services together.

That list grew and led to the creation of Chasing the Stigma and Hub of Hope app and website where people can put in their postcode to find nearby support.

Hub of Hope has 14,500-plus services listed and has clocked up more than 300,000 visitors a year and over a million searches.

“We’re trying to do what we can to survive without grant funding so fundraising like the Castle Green Homes team taking on the Three Peaks are crucial,” Jake added. “It will make a real difference in helping people find lifesaving support and advice.”

Castle Green’s charity challenge  is being driven by operations director Richard Williams, who battled with his mental health and weight before taking up walking and losing more than nine stone.

With construction workers said to be four times more likely to die by suicide than the national average, the homebuilder invited Jake to share his journey at its supply chain conference.

“It’s important to look after your mental health. People talk about positive physical health and fitness but tend not to talk about mental fitness in the same way – they always think of mental health meaning mental illness,” Jake said.

“If you talk about it when it’s positive, it makes it easier to have conversations when it’s not so good. Education and training is needed in schools and workplaces so that people have these conversations from an early age. It’s important that people look after each other and that we have systems that are fit for purpose to give people the help they need.”

Jake previously completed the Three Peaks and admitted he didn’t appreciate how challenging it would be.

“My mental health can be massively affected by lack of sleep so doing the Three Peaks probably wasn’t the best idea in the world, but the experience and achievement was well worth it,” he said.

He urged the team to try and sleep in between the walks.

The other charities set to benefit from Castle Green’s Three Peaks challenge are Ogwen Mountain Rescue and Prostate Cancer UK.

For more information about the challenge and to give what you can see https://gofund.me/ff6855ae