Richie Davies

I’m Richard Davies and I suffer with a mental illness.

That is somehow becoming easier to say all the time. In 2013, I was diagnosed with having stress, anxiety, and panic attacks. It all came about due to the normal everyday situations that we all go through and it opened my eyes to a world I did not understand. That is where you can say this all began for me.

Today I have what is called Anxiety Disorder, I suffer with panic attacks, high levels of anxiety for no reason and it’s completely changed my life for both the better and the worse.

Do It For Donny is a group I put together for two reasons.

1) I wanted to help people like me who suffer with mental illness and;

2) My oldest friend Donny Patel

One thing I have found during my illness was that I felt very alone and could not talk to friends about it. I also did not know what help was out there for me. This made me want to raise awareness of mental health problems, so that people could understand what we go through daily and so that people who live with this type of illness would know where to turn when they felt they needed to ask for help.

This is why Mind – The mental health charity became my charity of choice.

I decided to take on the most extreme challenges I could find and use them to raise money to help support Mind.

I always pick the hardest things to do because they push me to my limits, both mentally and physically which in turn help my recovery. So far, I have taken part in Hell Runner – a 12mile extreme trials run and have the London marathon 2014 coming up.

My friend Donny has stage 4 cancer and inspires me to take on such challenges and more importantly inspires me to never quit. Since being diagnosed I have only seen him act with grace and dignity. He never complains or gets angry about what is happening to him. He just continues to think of and give to others. Holds his head high and looks to the future. A post on Facebook from him is what really kick started the Do it for Donny group.

After reading what he had written it got me thinking and inspired me to start a charity group for us and our friends to pull together and raise money for our chosen charities. 24 hours later Do it for Donny was born on Facebook. I did not want to stop there and decided to use Twitter and Tumblr as mediums for us to get our message out there and do as much good in the world as we could.