I'm Sophie, I'm 33 years old and live in London, U.K. I have battled with bad anxiety and depression since I was a teenager. Creativity, in particular art and music, has always provided a positive escape where I've felt I belong and can express myself.

I have worked incredibly hard to transform my life; and along the way, I've become fiercely spirited about the need to improve our education around physical and mental health. Why did it have to take me a decade of gruelling self-work, expensive therapy sessions, strong medication and so much internal hardship to know that some things were harm in disguise.

In what at times, feels like deep isolation, the glaring evidence of research points to the reality that there is not enough informative accounts and examples about real lived experiences or easily accessible support available. We're not actively encouraged to support ourselves in the current system we're living in.

We're encouraged to rely on services or drugs - that keep us reliant on them because we lack a certain awareness and knowledge of what's really going on. Laughable wait times for appointments, medication with confusing and undesirable side effects (that lead to taking more drugs to fix the side effects!), and therapy sessions the price of a holiday for just an intro session. I have been trying to find the missing puzzle pieces since I first communicated to my parents that something wasn't right at 15.

In 2020, I discovered a way to put some of my paintings onto activewear. I remember ordering the first samples and thinking how unique and beautiful they were against the backdrop of black, grey and plain colours. My entire wardrobe has always been black because I've always tried to look thinner rather than just wear what I wanted. As if I needed to dim myself down and not stand out from the crowd. It has taken me 5 years of working on this business whilst managing my mental health and working full-time to be able to continue with this. I'm proud to say as a result of the perserverance, I am in very different mental space and I have a strong support network around me that now starts with myself. This is a movement that will move needle on how we perceive mental health and how we can better support ourselves and others.

Sophie Middleton