Natalie Wilson

Natalie Wilson. A 21 year old Journalsim and Media student at DMU. Mental Health activist with lived experience who aspires to make a difference and believes in the power of the individual.

My life is dominated by mental health. I have mental health problems myself and have also seen people I care about have similar difficulties too.

My experiences have fuelled my passion to help others. Some people suffer from mental illness and want to get away from it, others are impacted upon differently and it becomes something they are passionate about. I am the latter.

Mental illness is no longer something I simply have but is also something I am interested in. I am interested in prevention, raising awareness and fighting stigma but also in helping and supporting people who are experiencing difficulties in managing and overcoming this.

I am studying Journalism and Media after changing from mental health nursing. I changed course not because I didn't want to do nursing but because I needed to be able to protect my own health. However I am finding new ways of making a difference; blogging, writing, speaking up. Writing is something I love and I am excited to become more knowledgable around media and other ways of communicating.

In my studies I aim to develop interests in other areas and build on my skills and alongside this in my personal time volunteer and be active in mental health. Eventually I would like to specialize in Health Journalism and help people experiencing mental illness to write and speak up to help themselves, others and challenge stigma.

I blog for Time to Change and selfharm.co.uk.