Just a quick disclaimer, we're going to be discussing suicide and mental health, so as a warning this episode may be triggering.

If you or someone that you know may be struggling, you can reach out to shout the UK's free confidential 24-7 mental health

for crisis support.

There's a queue, apparently, of 500,000 children for NHS support for their mental health.

If it was a real cue, it would be from

London to Birmingham. Welcome back to the LuxGen Challenges podcast. I'm Amber and today I'm

joined by Ben West, a dedicated mental health campaigner who has transformed personal tragedy into

a beacon of hope for others. At 17, Ben lost his brother Sam to suicide,

a loss that profoundly shaped his path in life forever.

As a promise to your brother Sam,

you dedicated yourself to educating and campaigning around mental health.

And throughout his career, Ben has become a force of change, challenging us all to treat mental

health differently.

And he has gone on to win the Diana Legacy Award and the Pride of Britain Award.

In this episode, we'll hear his story, learn from his journey and gain insights into how we can support ourselves and others going through

mental health challenges. So Ben, welcome to challenges. I thought we'd start from the beginning.

Could you tell me a bit about you and your brother and your relationship with him?

Absolutely. I think what's important here is to go back six years to when I was

about 17 years old, Sam was 15. At that time in my life, I'd no idea what mental health was.

No one had ever talked to me about mental health. Certainly no one had ever told me about mental

illness. And so the idea that I'm sitting, doing a podcast,

talking about mental health six years later,

...