Arden University's Kieron Oakland tells us about his involvement with Mind and their streaming challenges designed to raise funds in the fight for better mental health.
My involvement with Mind actually began (funnily enough) with my own mental health struggles towards the end of 2020.
After getting back to my old self, in large part thanks to the wonderful support of my colleagues here at Arden University, I heard that Mind was our nominated charity for 2021 and was keen to get involved and do something to help others.
I put myself forward to complete a 24-hour gaming livestream. Gaming and mental health are two topics very close to my heart, so it was incredibly rewarding to combine them both and hopefully contribute to an important cause. The stream itself was an immense success and a lot of fun, raising over £1300 – a figure that absolutely blew me away!
A couple of months afterwards, I received an email from Mind thanking me for the stream and its impact, outlining how they were keen to have more people complete streams like I did. They asked me to put together some content for them to use in their marketing… I had never done anything like it before but if I am going to be uncomfortable for anything – it is mental health!
I lost my father to suicide when I was 16 and gaming gave me so much in terms of coping and talking to friends about what I was going through, so what an amazing cause to be involved in.
