Borough 2 Boro Marchester- walking 345 miles for young people's mental health

Growing up, Sam never knew anything about mental health and mental illnesses. That all changed when, at the age of around 15, she started to notice changes in her mental health.

She began to notice how she lost the sense of enjoyment in her usual hobbies, she struggled with basic daily tasks and she then began to experience suicidal thoughts, to only name a few things.

What she later found out was depression ended up changing all aspects of her life.

The night of 26 September 2014, she had her first experiences of being suicidal. This sadly wasn’t the last.

On the night of 2 June 2015, she was suicidal again.

Some say suicide is ‘selfish’, ‘the cowards way out’ or that people are ‘weak’ if they attempt suicide or are suicidal.

The thing is, that is far from true.

On the surface, many would think Sam had the perfect life but the grass is always greener on the other side.

To her, she felt like there was nothing worth living for in life and that the problems she was going through would never end.

Fast forward ten years and a lot has changed.

Not only has her mental health improved, she has moved from London to Middlesbrough, where she lived for over three years and now resides in Manchester.

Through her own experiences of mental health issues, she is launching Support For Us, a charity to provide training and resources around young people’s mental health.

With June 2025 marking ten years since she was at her lowest, she wanted to set a new challenge for herself.

Growing up in London, she moved to Middlesbrough in 2021 and then to Manchester in 2025. She has decided to incorporate this in a fundraiser for Support For Us.

In April 2024, she walked the Brighton Marathon (26.2 miles).

For 2025, she is going to walk 345 miles. Titled Borough 2 Boro Manch, she is going to walk the distance of Union Street SE1 (London) to Union Street TS1 (Middlesbrough) to Union Street M4 (Manchester) to mark how far she has come in life.

Walking the streets of Manchester, she will average 20 miles a day for up to 17 consecutive days until she hits 345 miles.

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