David Beeney: Striving to break down the stigma around mental health one business at a time

David Beeney's ‘fight not flight’ for a world where everyone can be kinder and more open about their mental health.

Four and a half years ago on a Monday morning in Manchester, David Beeney took the leap in breaking his silence, finally outing himself about his mental health, a secret that had tormented him into silence his whole life. This catalytic moment spurred Beeney’s decision to devote the rest of his life to ensuring that others don’t suffer in silence as he did for 36-years.

Many years before his great leap, Beeney had been working his way up through the media industry. “For the first half of my career, in some ways, my mental health changes helped me”, Beeney admits. “They made me more creative and more engaging as a manager and a leader, but in the second half of my career, I started bottling it. I wouldn’t apply for big senior jobs because I thought they’d induce panic attacks and my secret would come out,” he explains.

As a result, David Beeney now helps to educate businesses about mental health in the workplace, to break down the stigma and eventually achieve his goal in ‘Breaking The Silence’, the name he so aptly gave to his organisation in 2017. An emergence of passion within Beeney's voice arises as he explains: “I help businesses create kinder cultures in the workplace, where every employee can feel safe to open up about their wellbeing. What I love about what I do is that everybody wins, not only the employee wins but the employer does too, their employees are less likely to go off with longterm work-related stress issues and generally people become more engaged, energised and productive in the workplace, so the business wins as well.”

David Beeney’s openness and honesty have been the making of his success, emanating a magnetic air of understanding and empathy, motivating a society where “everyone can eventually feel safe to open up about their mental health.” Exemplifying this quality, he willingly dives into expressing his fears amidst lockdown measures: “Suddenly having to work virtually every day, delivering workshops and conference talks online, I wasn’t sure I would be able to deliver a talk to a large audience whilst sitting in a room on my own. I feared my old demons would return and I’d lose my battle with panic attacks again.” A reality that many of us can relate to.

An air of guilt emits through our Zoom call as Beeney appreciates the gross reality of being “busier than ever before” since the coronavirus outbreak in the UK: “Sadly we haven’t only got a coronavirus pandemic, there’s a mental health pandemic too. More people are struggling at the moment than ever before and more businesses are finally realising that they’ve got to have a strategy in place to support their staff.”

Beeney’s work has revolutionised so many people’s lives, spreading his name so widely that he now works with some of the most powerful organisations in the world. His work with the Royal Navy and political parties make him a foundational asset underpinning this country’s mental health. Since lockdown began the mental health of the Royal Navy began diminishing rapidly. “The Royal Navy has a very macho image,” he begins. “Statistics don’t lie when it comes to the fact that nearly eight out of ten suicides are male and that if you're male and you sadly die before you’re 50 in the UK, the most likely way you are going to die is by taking your own life. So to get to work with the Royal Navy that is still very macho, very male-dominated, to try and help them create a kinder culture where every sailor can feel safe to open up and talk about their mental wellbeing is an absolute privilege to do. My work looks like I'll be continuing with them for the next couple of years, I’m very excited about that.” Beeney sits back in his seat with an air of gratitude about him, he remains humbled by the prospect.