Meet the selfless mental health heroes challenging stigma up for Sun’s Who Cares Wins award
ALL three of our finalists up for The Caroline Flack Mental Health Hero award have overcome their own adversity to selflessly help others.
We received such a high calibre of entrants for this category of The Sun’s Who Cares Wins awards, sponsored by the National Lottery, and in partnership with NHS Charities Together.
And each one, in their own unique way, is helping to break down barriers surrounding mental health.
Sega Habtom fled a civil war in her home-country of Eritrea to help others through their trauma, Joshua Sturgeon runs support groups for men to get them to open up about their mental health issues, and Amandip Sidhu has set up a charity for stressed out NHS staff after his own doctor brother committed suicide.
But there can only be one winner – and they are set to be announced at our star-studded awards ceremony, hosted by Davina McCall and screened on Channel 4 and All 4 on September 24.
Meet our finalists…
SEGA HABTOM
WHEN Sega Habtom left her war-torn home-country of Eritrea to seek asylum in the UK, she had one mission – to help others like her.
She gained a degree in counselling and now works at Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre, a charity that offers therapy to people from diverse backgrounds living across London.
Eritrea’s war of independence against its imperial neighbour Ethiopia, began in 1961 and ended in 1991, a year after Sega arrived in the UK.
Sega, 60, says: “It was 30 years of war. People were dying, people were displaced.
“I have family members who passed away in the war. I have disabled relatives.
“My relative lost an eye, a leg and a hand. This is a result of the war.
“So life was very difficult in Eritrea then.”
Sega was 27 when she came to the UK in 1990. She says: “I came here to survive and to study.
“When I arrived, I was shocked, firstly by the weather. I was used to living in hot weather.
“I didn’t know any English. The only words I knew were, ‘thank you’ and, ‘sorry’.
“If you don’t know the language, it’s so difficult. I didn’t have any family here. I didn’t know anyone in this country. It took time for me to integrate.
“I decided I had to study, I had to have a skill. I had to be financially independent.”
She gained a diploma in IT and worked as a clerk for the charity, Freedom From Torture, which provides therapeutic care for survivors of torture, before completing her degree in counselling.
Sega, who speaks five languages, joined Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre’s team in 2007, as a trainee, and is now a senior counsellor there.
Her work predominantly focuses on supporting marginalised groups, including refugees and asylum seekers with complex needs.
She says: “I know how difficult life can be here if you don’t know the language, the system and the culture, so that’s why I wanted to help others like me.”
Sega was nominated by Lizzie Francis, from Nafsiyat Intercultural Therapy Centre’s team, who says: “Sega’s personal journey and exceptional dedication to supporting people like herself, who have faced terrible hardships and have sought refuge in the UK, make her deserving of this recognition.”
One of Sega’s notable achievements is her leadership of a vibrant women’s support group.
Lizzie says: “Sega’s understanding of her clients’ culture, and the ability to communicate with the women in their first language, makes the group what it is.
“It’s a space for clients to be themselves, build relationships and heal from their experiences.”
Maria, 55, whose name we have changed to protect her identity, has received counselling from Sega after suffering from panic attacks, anxiety and insomnia triggered by the domestic violence she experienced in her native Pakistan.
She says: “When we first met, I was very stressed. I did not want to speak about my problems. But she told me we could just talk about anything. Then I started to trust her and felt like I could share things.”
Sega also encouraged Maria to join her women’s group.
Maria says: “The group is so good for me, for one or two hours, we just forget about everything. It’s so therapeutic.
“If I feel stressed in the morning, I go there and feel completely changed.”
She adds: “Sega deserves to win because of her devotion, her energy, her loyalty and her love for the profession.
“We need more people like her.”
JOSHUA STURGEON
AFTER losing his best friend to suicide, Joshua Sturgeon set up a support group for men struggling with their mental health.
Suicide is the single biggest killer of men under the age of 50 and around three quarters of deaths from suicides each year are men.
Up to 100 men now attend Men In Need Together – or MINT, as it is known in West Yorkshire – every week.
Joshua, 30, from Morley, Leeds, said: “Losing Jack was a huge shock. I’d suffered with depression myself and he had been the one to help me through my struggles.
“He was always a happy lad with a great family and amazing friends.
“If you’d have put 20 blokes in front of me and said one of these guys is struggling and will take his own life, Jack would have been the last person I’d have expected. He had everything going for him.”
The group started in 2018 at St Peter’s Church, Morley, where Jack’s funeral was held.
Joshua said: “After the funeral, I went to the local Wetherspoons and a few of us were chatting about what services there are for men other than going to the GP.
“As we know, a lot of men hate going to the GP in general.
“We came up with the idea of finding a safe space where men could just go and talk openly.
“The power of speaking is so underrated. I suffered with depression for around seven years and it wouldn’t have been anywhere near as long if I’d just spoken to someone.
“I think it was the same with Jack. If he’d opened up, perhaps losing him could have been avoided.”
Joshua is now engaged to Jordann Robson, 28 – who nominated him for this award.
The couple have two children, Adaline, four, and Felicia, six.
Josh runs MINT as well as working full-time, where he supports vulnerable customers for a large bank.
Joshua added: “We find a lot of guys prefer to come to a group like ours where they are not just a number.
“A couple of weeks ago we had a new gent attend.
“He said he’d been planning to go home and take his own life. Instead, he stopped by a group and he’s still here today.
“It is stories like this that hit home for me what a success MINT has been.”
David Harper was struggling after wife Paula committed suicide aged 52 in January 2022. He says attending MINT saved his life.
David, 56, a printer, from Stanningley, West Yorks, said: “Josh is very understanding. Putting it simply, he just listened and offered advice when I wanted it.
“He’s a top man. The men at MINT know what you are going through, they know how you feel.
“I still attend regularly. I’m not sure I’d still be here today if I hadn’t found MINT.
“To say I was down is a big understatement. Having somewhere to go and offload your problems is incredibly helpful. It’s helped me get my life back on track.”
David Simpson, 47, from Morley, West Yorks, started attending MINT four years ago after struggling to deal with a childhood trauma.
He said: “My life had spiralled into drink and drugs.
“Then I heard about this place where it was ok to talk about your feelings and where it was ok to be vulnerable.
“After attending MINT, I had some one-on-one counselling.
“All of this has turned my life around and it’s all down to what Josh started.”
AMANDIP SIDHU
WHEN Amandip Sidhu’s doctor brother Jagdip took his own life due to the stress of work in the NHS, he wanted to ensure no more lives were lost.
Jagdip was academically gifted and sailed through his exams to become a top consultant cardiologist at Darent Valley Hospital, Kent.
But the stress of the job, the punishing hours and feeling he had nowhere to turn, led him to take his own life in November 2018, aged 47.
With levels of burnout, anxiety and depression at an all-time high in the medical profession, Amandip set up the charity Doctors in Distress in 2019.
Since then it has helped more than 2,500 healthcare professionals.
Amandip says: “The reassuring thing is that it has saved others.
“There are inherent issues within the profession about coming forward and asking for help.
“The medical and healthcare professionals have always been notorious for not doing what they say to others, like ‘look after yourself’.”
Doctors In Distress runs support groups and workshops to help health professionals talk about their anxieties.
He believes that if such a service was available, it could have helped his brother.
Amandip, who works in the pharmaceutical industry, says: “As a consultant, my brother was working very, very hard.
“He couldn’t sleep and was still on call, which he didn’t expect at that stage of his career.
“He was burnt out, depressed. He felt unrelenting work pressure and was very alone.
“It wasn’t really until he was signed off sick that he reached out and said ‘I’m done’.
“He was a complete shadow of who he was previously. Five days later he ended his life.
“My brother didn’t talk to me until it was way too late.
“The way the medical professions are, there’s a culture of not talking about their own difficulties because that’s a sign of weakness. Hopefully now that narrative is starting to adjust.”
As well as support groups, the charity aims to reduce the stigma around mental health in the workplace and lobbies to make the NHS a better and safer workplace.
It also runs a project planting trees at hospitals in memory of healthcare workers who have taken their lives.
It was an idea spearheaded by junior doctor turned best-selling author of This Is Going To Hurt, Adam Kay, who left the medical profession in 2010 due to burnout.
Last year his book was turned into a hit BBC TV series, starring Ben Whishaw, which features the suicide of a student doctor.
Amandip, who lives in Watford, Herts, was nominated for the award by Dr Samantha Anthony, 47, an associate specialist in dermatology at West Hertfordshire Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.
She is a big advocate of the work the charity does and has introduced it to staff at Watford General Hospital.
She says: “Amandip always says, ‘I’m just a bloke from Watford’.
“But this one man has set this up on his own, off the back of his own tragedy.
“He has come to understand this problem better than any medic would.
“His charity is saving lives every day.”