Jonny Benjamin MBE Patron

Jonny Benjamin MBE is an award-winning mental health campaigner, film producer, public speaker, writer and vlogger.

At the age of 20 he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar, and later began making films on YouTube about the condition that have been watched by hundreds of thousands of people.

Jonny now speaks publicly about living with mental illness and has written articles and given various interviews on TV, Radio and in print around the world to help educate and break stigma. He has also produced and presented documentaries on BBC Three and Channel 4 on the subjects of mental health and suicide.

His 2014 social media campaign with Rethink Mental Illness to #findMike, the man who talked him out of jumping off a bridge when he was suicidal, went viral and led to Jonny becoming a prominent spokesperson on the subject of suicide. He has recently been campaigning to get mental health onto the curriculum in schools and last year launched a mental health workshop, ThinkWell, which is now being introduced into secondary schools across the country.

Jonny has also worked internationally, and has spent time in India helping to develop a mental health and suicide prevention strategy.

He is currently writing the first of two books on mental health due to be published by Pan Macmillan at the start of 2018.  In 2017, Jonny participated in the London Marathon with Neil Laybourn, the man who stopped Jonny on the bridge to raise money for Heads Together, a coalition of major mental health charities.