Mikeysline is a multi-award-winning grass roots mental health and suicide prevention charity based in Highland offering non-judgemental, confidential peer support 365 days a year.  

 

Mikeysline was formed out of tragedy to offer hope following the loss to suicide of two 23-year-old male friends within 48 hours of each other.  This was against a background of increasing numbers of suicides at this time in Highland, particularly amongst younger people.  At their wake, Mikey’s uncle talked to their peers and found that many of them felt there was nowhere to go if they were struggling with their mental health or thoughts of suicide, and they said that they would not use traditional phone helplines.  The idea of the text line was born.  Mikeysline’s textline was the first text helpline in the UK when formed in late 2015.

 

Since then, a lot has happened and we have developed our services considerably, including expanding the options for the text-line from the original SMS text in 2015 to incorporate 5 text-based options, 1:1 face to face and online support in our Hives, in the community and in schools. The funds raised to date by the WoA Lunch accelerated our support to families. We already had Community Link workers in Caithness but with funds raised we have opened two more in 2023 in Sutherland and Skye with the hope to have more workers in different regions of The Highlands over the next year. We work with a lot of sports groups, organisations and businesses, providing talks and workshops to breakdown the stigma of mental health and to talk about suicide prevention.

 

Our support is for both young people and adults, typically from age 11 years up with no upper age limit and all genders, operating throughout Highland and Moray. 

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People can struggle daily with a multitude of mental health and emotional issues, which impact their life and health, yet only a fraction of people feel able to talk about it. At Mikeysline, our suicide prevention and mental health awareness work is at the core of what we do to break down the stigma associated with seeking support for emotional distress. That it is ok not to be ok and that no one should suffer in silence.