Stu Skinner, expedition leader & MHFA pioneer
“Mental illness prepared me to lead expeditions in the world’s most extreme environments”
Stu Skinner has walked, cycled and led expeditions all over the world, and is now using his personal experiences of mental illness to pioneer the introduction of Mental Health First Aid into the adventure industry.
“Bipolar Disorder is an illness of extremes. It is a condition that encompasses deeply debilitating lows and euphoric, yet wildly destructive, highs. It was an illness I knew nothing about until I ended up in A&E.
“All that I treasured and all that I hoped for perished after a psychotic episode in which I lost touch with reality; my relationship, my career and with it, my self-worth and self-esteem. Feeling like I had nothing left, suicide became not an option, but the only option. I had lost all hope. It’s not that wanted to die; I just wanted an end to my pain.
“That all changed when a friend invited me on a cycling trip spanning 11 countries across Asia. I didn’t even own a bike at the time, but it felt like something I was destined to do. Not only did the trip change my life; it saved my life and my recovery journey had begun in earnest.
“Shortly before leaving, I was featured in the award-winning BBC Documentary Surviving Suicide where I opened up about my experiences of mental illness. I decided that I was also going to use my adventure as a platform to spark conversations about mental health and challenge the stigma that people with lived experience faced.
“Despair and hopelessness had transformed into determination and purposefulness. I became inspired to become an Expedition Leader and I started my Mountain Leader Training immediately upon return. I wanted to take people like myself on life-changing journeys across the world and benefit from them as I had.
“I encountered a lot of stigma when I first set out as Expedition Leader; as Bipolar Disorder proved to be a label that providers couldn’t see past. ‘We have to think about the safety of the children’ I was told. Unstable, unsafe, dangerous, weak, crazy, selfish are all unjustified stereotypes I’ve had thrown at me. It was perhaps befitting that I would go to extreme measures to prove myself capable by hiking the 2,179-mile long Appalachian Trail.
“I wouldn’t say I suffer from depression; I battle with depression. It throws everything it has at me and I fight back. My scars from self-harming are simply my war wounds. I benefited from the many obvious parallels that arose between the journey I hiked on the Appalachian Trail and that of my journey to recovery.
“It has been a tough old slog full of ups and downs, of daily challenges and the unforeseen. There were days when I felt I couldn’t go on any longer or wanted to give up altogether. During those moments on the trail, I found the determination to carry on by drawing strength from years of frustration I felt about feeling so powerless when in the depths of my depression.
“I have gone on to lead over 50 expeditions in 64 countries and set up my own mental health charity. I have proved the doubters wrong, including myself. I have gone on to walk across Jordan and recently became the first person to hike the Seven Summits Sinai Trail in one continuous journey.
“If anything, having a mental illness has prepared me to undertake and lead challenging expeditions in some of the most extreme environments across the world. Recovery for me is not living without Bipolar, but learning to live with it. I have found that it helps to look at my life as though it were a story. I am the hero of a story of my own making and all that has happened to me is just part of my destiny. It’s up to me how I respond to life’s challenges and my actions will determine how my story reads.
“I would never have found a love for the mountains had it not been for my mental health challenges. My diagnosis and the challenges that come with it are a part of me and my story, but they do not determine who I am. I love how my story now reads and there are plenty of chapters yet to come. The journey continues.”
