In episode 291 of The Just Checking In Podcast we checked in with Leigh Edwards.
Leigh Edwards works as a QA Analyst for a housing association and helps lead on the community work that men’s mental health charity Mandem Meet Up (MMU) carries out in Wolverhampton.
Leigh was raised by a single mum in a difficult neighbourhood of Wolverhampton, but achieved the grades to study at university. He dropped out in his second year but views it as the best decision he’s ever made.
Leigh’s mental health difficulties started when he was 26 years old. He suffered with auditory psychosis for eight months but never told anyone about it.
It got to the point where he became suicidal and he planned to take his own life on Mother’s Day in 2019. His plan was to go round to see family and ‘say goodbye’ for the final time. However, his mum had the most important mother’s instinct of her life and wouldn’t let him leave the house as she knew something was wrong.
After forcing the issue through his defences, Leigh disclosed to her how he was feeling, broke down and agreed for his family to take him to their local hospital.
After psychiatric nurses came to his house for a few weeks and checked in on him, he felt like it was no longer helping him and decided to take ownership of his mental health and life.
He started doing meditation, discovered the work of a philosopher called Alan Watts and the concept of Taoism, jumped down a rabbit hole and never came out.
In this episode we discuss Leigh’s upbringing, the psychosis, suicidality and recovery. We then discuss the grief of losing his best friend Ryan who had helped him through that period just a year afterwards in 2020, who tragically took his own life.
We also discuss the impact that David Goggins had on Leigh’s recovery and how it led him to taking his fitness journey to another level, starting with one half-marathon in memory of his friend, before running two ultra-marathons for himself.
Leigh’s advocacy work began in December 2022, a month before MMU Wolverhampton was formed.
He took part in a monthly hike in Snowden with MMU and in January 2023 – the charity’s Founder and previous JCIP guest Jamie Dennis gave the green light to get involved with Mandem Wolves.
MMU Wolves work continued with an outreach programme for homeless people in Wolverhampton town centre, which takes place once-a-month and has been running for two years.
We discuss this community work, running MMU football and his plans to turn it into a fully-fledged team.
We finish by discussing his next project to run 10 marathons in 10 days to fundraise for MMU, which at time of recording he was preparing for, but has now successfully completed in June 2025.
As always, #itsokaytovent
You can donate to Leigh’s campaign here.
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