Support people with long-term mental health conditions

Hi I'm Empress Gibbs, founding director of Skate Buddies UK CIC. I advocate for the improvement of mental health and wellbeing. I was diagnosed with emotionally unstable personality disorder (EUPD) over a decade ago and struggled to find the support that I needed to start my journey of recovery. I had limited access to talking therapies but medication was the main form of treatment, and when I decided that I no longer wanted to take medication and find an alternative route to recovery it became very apparent that neither the framework or pathway was available for this to happen.

I am very passionate about supporting communities and collaboration based off my lived experience of living with a long-term mental health condition and the understanding that it takes a village to help and support someone to rebuild their life and walk on the path to recovery.

I created Skate Buddies UK CIC to support children, young people and adults with the repair, maintenance and improvement of their mental health, well-being and fitness. We provide roller skating taster session, adult skate sessions, family sessions, community jam sessions, RollerFitness and community workshops featuring collaborations with skate groups and coaches locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.

This year we have become the proud recipients of the Inclusive Health Programme 2025, funded by ISE, The Living Well Consortium and The Health Innovation Network. Being on this programme gives us the opportunity to start the work of creating a new pathway and framework within the NHS and mental health services for people living with a Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) more specifically Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder (EUPD), a profoundly underrepresented group in the West Midlands and the UK.

The current pathway of treatment advised by NICE and RCPsych recommend psychotherapy as first-line treatment and they recommend against pharmacological treatments for EUPD, except in crises and for co-morbidities. However, for people living with EUPD experience the complete opposite. This was made even more evident to me when doing research into the provision of mental health service for people living with EUPD in the West Midlands and UK.

An estimated 280 million people in the world have and suffer with depression, and more than 700,000 of these people die due to suicide, and specific figure for people with EUPD is unknown due to a lack of research. Mind The Gap a report: How can we improve services for patients with EUDP stated that 52% of individuals receiving care from a community mental health team (CMHT) have EUPD. With this in mind we are starting out on the journey to collating the data and research needed to tackle this prevalent and much needed gap in mental health service provision.

The Rolling Towards Welling programme will provide the missing link between physical activity, psychotherapies and support for people living with EUPD in the West Midland and UK.

Stage one, a 2 year journey, with the support of the Inclusive Health Programme 2025 and partners we will develop the tailored physical roller skating activity and begin the co-design process with the individuals that will be using the service. In order for us to reach a wide range sample of the West Midlands we will be conducting research thorough a series of focus groups coupled with tailored roller skating session within the West Midlands Central, North, East, South, West & Black country within Community Mental Health Trusts (CMHT), substance and alcohol misuse services, parent/carer support groups and individuals not in services.

This work will require funds to enable us to cover the vast majority of the work. The grant won via the programme of £1,500 will give us a start that we need in regards to the equipment needed to for the focus groups. However this does not cover the cost for capacity building, skate facilities, focus groups facilitators, data collection and analysis and more.