A Leeds man has spoken out about his journey from thinking he 'couldn't function in society' to winning a prestigious mental health award.
Ben Jewers-Pettinger, 23, lost a lot of his self-esteem for years after failing his A-Levels while struggling with his mental health in sixth form. He had been battling both severe depression and anxiety.
After several years of struggling with unemployment, he was able to build himself back up and has now won an award from Prince Charles for his influence.
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Ben, who now lives in Wortley, told LeedsLive: "School had been going really well for me, I had great grades and I could've taken my life and career anywhere, tackled a lot of things - my future looked great.
"But then I got into sixth form and started to really struggle with my mental health - some things happened in my life and it started to take a bit of a toll. I ended up coming down with some pretty severe depression and anxiety issues. By the second year it had completely taken over and I failed.
"I went from a straight A student to failing completely and that was a harsh drop. It took a toll on my self confidence and my self esteem for years afterwards. I didn't really find any sort of work, I didn't try and pursue relationships or anything like that. I thought I was worthless. I thought I couldn't function in society."
After a while, Ben pushed himself to go to the Job Centre to get some help and complete some confidence boosting courses. It was there that he was introduced to the Prince's Trust, a charity founded by Prince Charles which helps young people into careers.
In September 2019, Ben began the trust's Team Programme. This began with a Lake District residential where he and other young people completed activities like caving, canoeing and sailing and worked on their confidence.
"I'd never done any of that before and I ended up coming out of that residential with all these new bits of confidence," Ben said.
"That basically helped turn me around to be honest, they gave me a boost of confidence back that I really needed to take control of my life again."
As part of the programme, Ben was set up with a work experience placement at construction company Balfour Beatty. After spotting his promise, Ben was hired as an administration assistant full-time, and then more recently promoted to an apprenticeship as a Data Analyst.
He said: "I'd never really been in a work environment before, and again I hadn't had the confidence to reach out anywhere. I'd still have all these myths in my head about the world of work.
"A couple of weeks kind of helped contextualise it a bit and kind of made it feel real - and then they said 'I think you've got promise. Well, we'll take you on' and they did.
"It's been life changing, to be honest. The main crux of that unemployment period, was that I had such a lack of self confidence and I didn't think I could do this.
"I didn't think I'd be able to hold down a job. I'm very happy to prove myself wrong. It's been very, very fulfilling."
Ben, who grew up around Leeds and the Yorkshire countryside, has also started volunteering as a young ambassador for the Prince's Trust. He regularly shares his story with other young people to help destigmatise talking about mental health.
He has even spoken at St James's Palace on behalf of many young people to Prince Charles himself.
"I've always wanted to be able to do something that helps people I think I lost my way for a few years and lost that part of myself with it," Ben said.
"But I've come back to tackle the world of work and to be able to share that confidence back out to be able to inspire people to help them - it's been helping me sleep at night. I'm doing good. And that really helps the self esteem.
"It was an out of this world experience meeting Prince Charles! It's so hard to describe. You see people on TV or whatever all the time and it feels like you'll only ever see them within that telly box.
"You can't really interact with them and then suddenly I'm sat in a room with him thinking: 'that's like the future king of England. That's the prince , right now I'm talking to him. Oh my gosh. Am I on the telly in the box now?' What a day, what an experience. I'll never forget that."
Ben's work in the community eventually resulted in him recently being nominated for and winning a prestigious Young Change Maker award from the Prince's Trust. He was up against people from all over England.
Ben added: "I didn't quite believe what I was being told when I won, I was in disbelief.
"The validation was nice. I guess it was feeling like, while by no means is it the end of the journey. In fact, it's really only the beginning. I think this is really solidifying the start of my journey in a really positive way. It meant the world.
"Mental health is definitely a journey and Covid hasn't helped me or anyone else. I still have bad days as well and my mental health problems aren't gone.
"But I'm not in the same place I was a few years ago. I was really struggling with it back around Sixth Form and for the years afterwards. Now I have a bad day now and then, but I have a lot of good days now as well.
"I'm still finding out things about myself and taking more care of my mental health and trying to make sure that I really understand what's happening up here. I'm definitely far better though.
"I definitely think more conversations about mental health are being had now. But I still feel like by a very optional engagement type way. You'll see conversations going around in workplaces but it's very much 'if you're interested come drop in'. And there's lots of people that can very easily be too distracted to actually go speak up.
"Lot of people might feel they're too busy or too on the sidelines or too far removed from these channels where all that mental health information is coming through. It would be nice if employers and businesses and stuff could do full sit downs and really go over these topics with everyone present and get their full attention.
"Generally, you can't see it so easily when someone is struggling with their mental health. So we all need to have that understanding of what's out there, what can be troubling a person, and what can be giving a person problems. It's always kind of a conversation worth having because it's vital to people's well being that they're healthy physically and mentally."
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