For Better North East Mental Health
The Mental Health Lottery was founded to support mental health charity Anxious Minds a multi-award winning charity founded by an Ex Veteran Edward Dean.
Eddie used his war pension to set up the charity Anxious Minds in 2015 were he still works as a volunteer Chief Officer. He struggled for over 2 years to get any support for his Mental Health after retiring from the Armed Forces (Army infantry) on completion of 22 years service.
This is what the Prime Minister Theresa May had to say about Edward:
You have shown remarkable dedication in ensuring veterans can access mental health support with your charity Anxious Minds. You know from first-hand experience what a difference this help can make and now, thanks to your hard work, veterans living in the North East can also benefit from this same support. I want to thank you for your inspiring commitment to supporting men and women, like yourself, who have risked their lives to serve our country.
Edward says: Finding mental health support before the outbreak of COVID-19 was next to impossible with ever-growing waiting lists of over a year for some adults and a lot longer for children with mental health services in some areas.
Millions of pounds in donations go into supporting some of the larger mental health charities across the UK but we see very little change when trying to access professional mental health services such as counselling and psychotherapy.
The Mental Health Lottery was set up to raise funds for Anxious Minds, who provide counselling and psychotherapy, and support for alcohol reduction like a lot of other smaller charities they get very little in funding and support a large number of people from some of the most deprived and hard-hit areas of the North East.
We simply cannot afford to run television and radio ads and go, door-to-door finding supporters, as we barely have enough funds to keep the lights on. Like a lot of the smaller charities, we are run mainly by volunteers like myself, who simply want to provide the support that’s needed when needed to the people we serve.
So when you play The Mental Health Lottery you’re playing to support all the volunteers in them smaller charities that go in day after day and ask for nothing in return except for the chance to keep our centres open and allow us to do so.
The Mental Health Lottery supports Anxious Minds to grow its services across the North East and in return, my guarantee to you is that 100% of money raised will go on proving more support to people we serve, people struggling from mental health across the North East.
Every mind matters.
Eddie
Chief Officer
Anxious Minds