The Proper Mental Podcast

Welcome to episode 163 with Steve Warwick, who is a men’s mental health advocate, eating disorder survivor and the man behind the Instagram page Healthy Done Sexy. In this episode I chat to Steve about his relationship with food from a creative perspective and a mental illness perspective. We chat about Steve’s history with Bulimia, how it showed up in his life and how he learned to manage it. We...

Welcome to episode 162 with Aidy Smith who is an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, content creator and speaker and the only TV presenter in the UK with Tourette Syndrome. Aidy created The Three Drinkers on Amazon Prime; the show has released 3 seasons since 2019 in over 100 territories and 10+ languages around the world. In this episode I chat to Aidy about Tourette Syndrome, when it showed u...

Welcome to episode 161 with Adam Bloom who is a multi-award-winning stand-up comedian and writer. Adam has made national TV appearances in Britain and The U.S. and has also ghost-written for 50 comedians. Adam has a diagnosis of Bipolar and in this episode, we chat about his experiences with hypomania which is the less extreme part of bipolar and very different to hyper mania. We chat about gettin...

Welcome to a very special Christmas episode of the Proper Mental podcast! Tis the season that not everybody enjoys, for a lot of different reasons.  I wanted to put something out at Christmas that might give someone a little lift if they needed one, even if it’s just for 5 minutes.  Sometimes 5 minutes can make all the difference. I reached out to advocates, campaigners, authors, speakers and podc...

Welcome to episode 160 with The Real Talk Therapist, Tasha Bailey! Tasha is an author, content creator and psychotherapist who specialises in trauma, self-love and creativity. In this episode I chat to Tasha about why she decided to become a therapist and some of the different ways that she supports the people she works with. We chat about the language of therapy becoming more common place and how...

Welcome to episode 159 with Kunt, who is a sometime comedy songwriter turned major irritant who records and performs as Kunt & The Gang! At Christmas 2020, his other band The K*nts, had an unexpected top 5 hit single with their protest song Boris Johnson is a F**king C**t.  Since then, they have had top 20 hits with Boris Johnson is STILL a F**king C**t, F** The Tories and Scrap The Monarchy d...

Welcome to episode 158 with Ro Bevan from Christmas For CAMHS, a registered charity who provides special Christmas gifts every year for children and young people who are inpatients in child and adolescent mental health (CAMHS) wards across the UK over the Christmas holiday period. Dr Ro Bevan got things started after working on CAMHS wards at Christmas and noticing a huge disparity in the way CAMH...

Welcome to episode 157 with Reed Amber, who is a proud sex worker, educator, anti-shamer and activist.  She is also co-founder of ComeCurious, a leading channel about sex and relationships and co-host of the award-winning F**ks Given podcast.  Reed describes herself as an anxious child and she became aware of her mental health from a young age.  In this episode Reed guides me through her early exp...

Welcome to this bonus episode which was recorded live at this year’s Mental Wealth Festival in October 2023. The Mental Wealth Festival is an annual event, hosted by City Lit, and offers free or low-fee events, including in person and online workshops, talks, discussions, exhibitions, and other activities. I was honoured to be asked to join a panel for experts and campaigners to chat about men's m...

Welcome to episode 156, where I’m joined by Chris & Stu from Hardcore Listings for a men’s mental health awareness month special! I reached out to the lads to borrow the Hardcore Listings format and do a Top 5 and they chose to do songs that are good for your mental health. I also really love how comfortable both Chris & Stu are talking about things like mental health and emotions and all...

Welcome to episode 155 with Sammy Trotman, who is the writer and creator of ‘That’s Not My Name’ a show about mental illness, labels and trauma. Sammy started writing the show while she was in a psychiatric hospital and the reasons why she ended up in hospital are what the show is based around. In this episode I chat to Sammy about writing the show and about open up conversations through performan...

Welcome to episode 154 with Mark Richardson, who is the drummer in Skunk Anansie and has previously played drums in Little Angels and Feeder. As a child Mark found that playing drums was the only that kept him from bouncing off the walls and he eventually moved to London to join Little Angels before joining Skunk Anansie after he met the band at the Kerrang! awards. Mark struggled with addiction f...

Welcome to episode 153 with Vanessa Cornell, who is a surfer, writer, teacher a messy mum of 5 and the founder of Nushu, an organisation that holds a safe space and creates a supportive environment for those seeking to live authentic, inspired, and joyful lives through the power of true community. At one point in time, Vanessa had everything that she thought she was supposed to.  She had the perfe...

Welcome to episode 152 with Kieran Cunningham, who is an author, climber and mountaineer. After being diagnosed with Bipolar 1 while at university, Kieran spent a decade travelling around the world trying to figure out what he wanted to do and how he was going to live with this diagnosis. Along the way he found that climbing was the perfect way for him to find peace and manage his illness. Eventua...

Welcome to episode 151 with Kim Davies! My wife Kim and I originally recorded and released this episode in April 2021. At that time, we were both quite nervous about putting our story out there so I just slipped it out as a bonus with very little promotion.  It had such a wonderful response and is still one of the episodes that I get the most feedback from. I can’t tell my story without Kim tellin...

Welcome to episode 150! I’m not sure if 150 episodes is an actual milestone or not, but it sort of feels like one so I wanted to mark it in some way. I’ve been lucky enough to be asked to tell my own mental health story in a lot of different places but it’s been a long time since I’ve talked about myself on Proper Mental. Very early on, episode 7 in fact, I did my own episode.  At that time, I had...

Welcome to episode 149 with James McMahon, a journalist and podcaster who spent a long time working at the NME, editing Kerrang! and interviewing pretty much everyone in the music industry. James has lived with OCD for most of his life, although for a lot of that time he had no idea what it was or how to get help. In this episode James and I chat about his own particular brand of mental illness, h...

Welcome to episode 148 with Dr Ben Cave, which is the pen name of a practising general and forensic psychiatrist. For over 30 years Ben has worked as a prison psychiatrist, community psychiatrist and as a consultant in medium-secure, low-secure and general mental health units. He is also the author of ‘What We Fear Most’ in which he reflects on a lifetime on the frontline of forensic psychiatry an...

Welcome to episode 147 with David Parkin is an author, theatre maker and installation artist whose work is fiercely autobiographical or silly and speculative. In 2015 he suffered his first manic episode and was sectioned under the mental health act for 4 months. He is currently putting on a fully immersive art installation called ‘Delusions of Grandeur’ which explains his experience of being secti...

Welcome to episode 146 with Kimberley Nixon, who is an actor and writer who has appeared in shows such as Fresh Meat, Cranford and The Tuckers and in 2017 she won the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Actress for her role in 'Ordinary Lies'. In this episode I chat to Kim about her experiences with OCD, which started after she become a mum in 2020. We chat about the way OCD impacted her early experiences...

Welcome to episode 145 with Jeremy Thomas, who is an author, public speaker and podcast host. Jeremy has had a really exciting life and a lot of this is down to him living a big chunk of it with undiagnosed manic depression, a condition that is now known as bipolar. He started off as a plugger for Decca Records in the 70’s working with the likes of Thin Lizzy and Al Green before moving away to sta...

Welcome to episode 144 with Eva Echo, who is a trans rights activist, writer and public speaker. It took Eva a long time to figure out who she was and learn to live as her true self and this had a hugely negative impact on her mental health from a young age. In this episode Eva and I chat about what it’s like to be transgender and she guides me through some of the current challenges that gender di...

Welcome to episode 143 with Danny McNamara, who is a songwriter and the singer in Embrace. Embrace released their debut album ‘The Good Will Out’ in 1996 and have gone on to release a total of 8 albums, all of which have charted in the top 10. Danny experienced mental health challenges as a teenager, at one point having 15 panic attacks a day.  He would eventually be diagnosed with PTSD and later...

Welcome to episode 142 with Cara Lisette, who is a mental health writer and campaigner, a registered mental health nurse and CBT therapist. In this episode I chat to Cara about her work in mental health services and some of the reasons why she got in to nursing and trained to be a therapist. Cara has many years of experience of living with an eating disorder and bipolar disorder and in this episod...

Welcome to episode 141 with Xani Byrne, who is currently riding a tandem around the coastline of the UK, covering 3500 miles to raise awareness of suicide and mental health and to raise money for to incredible support charities. The idea for his expedition came after losing his sister to suicide in 2022.  They had always planned to ride a tandem together but never got the chance and now Xani is of...