A young Scot who has battled his own mental health problems has started a social enterprise firm aimed at helping other sufferers.
Michael Ellis’ Wellbeans Coffee is coffee with a purpose - to promote and support mental health and wellbeing.
With Christmas and New Year looming Michael, 25, from Troon, Ayrshire reminds us: “Mental health doesn’t take a break for the holidays. It’s the most important time to check on someone.”
Michael, who now lives in Edinburgh, graduated in business management and marketing at Heriot Watt University in 2020 and is currently working in sales for Red Bull but he also runs his Wellbeans firm, selling coffee and ploughing some of the profits into mental health charities and initiatives.
Every bag of coffee the firm sells, a share of the profits is donated to the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) and has been used to invest in projects like The Changing Room Campaign which promotes men’s mental health and wellbeing through the power of football.
Michael knows first hand how bad things can get.
At just 17 one of his best friends took his own life.
He said: “That definitely had an impact on how open I wanted to be about my mental health. Losing someone at that age makes you realise it could happen again.”
His friend was “the brightest light in the room” and Michael said: ”It just shows you it can affect anyone.”
When he was university four years ago he began to develop his own anxieties.
He said: “It may have been down to uni pressure or doing something every day I didn’t enjoy ti a combination of those things and not being able to switch off.
“I was in my third year of civil engineering and started to get panic attacks every day and struggled to sleep at night; I couldn’t wind down.
“That went on for a fairly prolonged time without me realising what was going on, without knowing it was anxiety.”
He would find himself in tears and not know why and it took a long time of suffering before he took his mum’s advice and went to the doctor.
Michael said: “The doctor made it out to be fairly normal and said it was a generalised anxiety disorder.
“At that point I took a temporary suspension of studies and took a year out of university before coming back and switching my course.
“I tried to focus on eating well and maintaining physical fitness too to re-centre myself.”
He moved back in with his parents Aileen and David and began to run more as well as walking the family dog, Oscar, to get some fresh air and clear his head.
When the second lockdown hit he set himself the challenge of being fit and active with a focus on community.
He explained: “I ran every day for the 30 days of November last year and got at least one person to get involved in every run I did - either running socially distanced or plugging in earphones and chatting as I ran,
“The most important thing was getting out and about and staying connected with friends and family during lockdown.”
The running sessions were a huge hit and inspired Michael to take things a stage further.
He said: “In the New Year I was made redundant so I had time on my hands to come up with the concept. I’d had the idea for a while but it really came to fruition during that time.
“I wanted it to be proactive and benefit as many people as possible at a time when people needed a form of support.”
While the business started off by selling coffee direct to consumers it has now opened a cafe at Michael’s former university and when students buy a cuppa they are also helping to fund counselling projects for students who need them.
Michael said: “I went through the counselling system and was lucky to be seen fairly quickly but unis are stretched, they are almost at capacity.”
He also runs Wellbeans Wednesdays on Instagram where he gives a platform to anyone willing to share their story about mental health.
“It is all about generating a community. We have had professional trainers on, a suicide survivor and a student talking about how she spent a week on a psychiatric ward.
“But there is always hope no matter how low you get.
“I have experienced it where I felt the world was collapsing in on me and even if you are not comfortable talking about how you are feeing, hearing others stories can help.”
