Jonny Benjamin
We all need to make our mental health a priority
It had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood tale: a young, handsome but troubled protagonist, a quest to find an anonymous hero, huge depths of despair, before a remarkable, happy ending.
But #FindMike, as the tale was christened on social media, was the real-life story of Jonny Benjamin and his search for the man who had saved his life six years before.
Back on a cold January morning in 2008, Benjamin, then aged 20 and suffering from a severe bout of mental illness, attempted to take his own life by leaping from Waterloo Bridge. Many commuters, rushing to work, walked past. But one man didn’t: Neil Laybourn. He stopped, talked to him, and after 25 minutes persuaded Benjamin to step back.
In the ensuing melee – Benjamin was bundled into a police car, sectioned, and taken to hospital – the two men did not learn each other’s name, let alone swap contact details.
Six years later, in January 2013, Benjamin – in a better mental state – decided he wanted to “close the door on that chapter of my life” and find “Mike”, his nickname for the stranger who came to his rescue on the bridge.
Thanks to the power of social media, Laybourn, now 33, was tracked down in just a couple of weeks.
The story was turned into a wonderful documentary, Stranger on
the Bridge, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last May. And, indeed, Hollywood did briefly come knocking, wanting to give this story of hope the big-screen treatment.
But the happy ending – the heartfelt and cathartic meeting of two good people whose lives fatefully collided – had a complicated postscript.
A few months after the reunion, Benjamin, who suffers from both bipolar and schizophrenia, got worse.
“Things start to creep up again,” he says. “As soon as I stood outside the door, I was crippled by paranoid thoughts and a fear of people.”
On Tube journeys, he’d become convinced other passengers were out to get him. He explains: “I thought everyone despised me.”
He is such an articulate and thoughtful young man, it’s hard to believe that he could become overwhelmed by such delusions. But that is the power of schizophrenia.
It all came to a head one morning in the offices of the charity Rethink Mental Illness, one of the Telegraph Christmas Charities, which had helped him in his Find Mike campaign. He has now worked there for a number of years as an ambassador.
He did not know it at the time, but a side effect of one of the antipsychotic drugs he was taking, was akathisia: an intense restlessness. “It was horrible and exhausting. I had days and days pacing up and down and no sleep. I just had a breakdown.
“I thought: I need to hurt myself. I feel suicidal. I was in hysterics, I couldn’t stop crying, but my manager calmed me down – he was amazing.”
If the Find Mike campaign was a wonderful reminder that there is always light in the dark, this was painful proof that recovery from mental illness can be a long slog.
Benjamin spent much of last winter, including Christmas Day 2014, in hospital. He had told his close-knit family not to visit, and shut himself off from all the jollity and festivities.
But at 7am, as every morning, he got a knock on his hospital room door from a nurse with his medication. “I thought, ‘Oh, no. It’s Christmas Day and I’m away from my family’. And in comes a member of staff, with a gift, saying ‘Happy Christmas’. It was lovely. It changed the whole day.”
Since then Benjamin has made a lot of progress. “I am in a much better place,” thanks to a good psychiatrist, a better mix of drugs, and ceaseless vigilance about his wellbeing.
He admits that a possible downside of the documentary was that he thought: “I’m better, I don’t need this.” He now realises his brain still needs exercise and medication.
And that is one of the messages in the talks he now gives in prisons, hospitals and schools. Last month, for the first time, he returned to his own school: The Jewish Free school in north London, a place that has some dark memories for him. He was just 11 when he first suffered from delusions and hearing voices in his head.
“Since the film, I’ve had so many messages from people I was at school with. One person emailed to say, ‘All the time we sat next to each other in class, I was self-harming and you were going through the same thing. I wish I’d known.’ It’s just heart-breaking.”
But he firmly believes talking about mental health is the first step to removing any stigma, especially among schoolchildren. On Thursday, he will launch a nationwide workshop, ThinkWell, which will focus on educating 13-18-year-olds about mental health. This age group is reporting more anxiety and depression issues than ever.
“Last week I talked to a group of scouts, aged 10 and 11, and asked them if they would seek help if they had bad stomach cramps. And everyone put their hand up.
“Then I asked which of them would talk to someone if they were upset, or really low or anxious. Just three out of the 20 put their hand up.
“They said that they were worried what people would think.
“There is a real need for young people to talk. Suicide is a big killer, of young men in particular.”
In fact, it is the leading cause of death among men aged 20 to 34 in England and Wales, representing 24 per cent of all deaths in 2013.
Benjamin not only works for Rethink Mental Illness, which gives advice and information to those with mental illnesses and their carers, but also still uses some of its services. “I attend a local Rethink group. Being with people who get you, who share similar thoughts, is a lifeline.”
Since their meeting, Benjamin and Laybourn have stayed friends. “I had always wondered what happened to that guy on the bridge, and thanks to him, I’ve met some amazing people,” says Laybourn. “But the most important thing is that Jonny is my mate and he is still on the planet.”
Jonny has only hazy recollections of that cold morning on Waterloo Bridge, save one thing he remembers clearly: that the stranger kept on telling him: “Things can get better.”
And they have. Not in a Hollywood way. But then life rarely does follow a simple script.