Dan Simms, a 24-year-old from Caldicot, Monmouthshire, has decided to take on a challenge to raise awareness of male suicide, encourage men to talk and raise money for charity Andy’s Man Club and the families of the friends he’s lost to suicide. After losing his childhood best friend, Tom, to suicide, Dan was left with an overwhelming sense of regret. Almost six years later, Dan lost another friend, Rory, 35, to suicide. Dan, himself no stranger to mental health problems, has decided to take action to help others.
Dan is taking on the epic task of walking from Caldicot to Amsterdam. The journey will take him across the Severn Bridge to Bristol, onto Corsham, Oxford, Swindon, and then to Harwich where he will catch a ferry to the Hook of Holland and continue his walk onto the Netherlands’ capital. It involves 400km (248.5 miles) of walking which he hopes to complete over 13 days. He plans on clocking up an average of 31km (19 miles) a day, staying at friends’ houses, cheap accommodation and sometimes camping along the way.
He said he hoped his walk would make people with mental health problems feel “valued, important and understood”. “I chose this time of year deliberately to make it harder, I want it to be a lonely and painful experience. Mental illness is a lonely and painful experience. This walk symbolises that cold, lonely, dark journey through a mental health crisis. A walk in summer would be too easy. This had to be a proper challenge.”
Over the past decade, the suicide rate among men has been higher in Wales than in England, according to the latest ONS data. In 2022, north-east England had the highest rate of male suicide, 12.8 per 100,000 individuals, followed by Wales and north-west England at 12.5. It also shows that men are three times more likely to die by suicide than women in Wales.
Losing Tom and Rory has taught Dan that men can be suffering in silence. Dan admits he still finds it difficult to talk about how he is feeling but he now wants to be there for other people. “No other families should have to through the same thing as these two families are very sadly going through right now.
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