The day our 12-year-old son told us he was feeling suicidal

When Steve and Natasha Bate’s 12 year old son Seb came home from school one day and said he felt suicidal their world turned upside down.

“We had absolutely no idea he was feeling that way,” says Steve from Leeds.

“Looking back I suppose there were signs. He had become a bit withdrawn and said he no longer wanted to play school rugby but we just put that down to the fact he was about to become a teenager but maybe it was a sign.”

Seb confided his feelings to his mum when she picked him up one day and she told Steve.

“You immediately think the worst, that something awful has happened to him,” says Steve.

“We knew he had a pretty stable home life and so it must be at school.

“I am quite happy to admit that I have had my own mental health challenges and we have a good relationship and so I talked to him and there didn’t seem to be one particular thing that was making him feel the way he did.”

They contacted Seb’s school Ashville School in Harrogate and were surprised to find that they had a resident counsellor.

“The school was brilliant and told us that they had a psychologist come into school from the Oakdale Centre in Harrogate. We had never heard of it. But they were amazing.”

The Oakdale Centre is an independent not for profit provider of psychological therapies and personal development to adults, young people, children and families across the North of England.

“We both went with Seb for the start of the first session and it was really hard to hear the things he had thought about doing to end his life. But what was equally as shocking was the counsellor telling us it was relatively common among teenagers.”

Steve was also shocked to hear that if they wanted to get help for Seb on the NHS he could have to wait for more than six months for help.

“It seems that the only way he could get help quickly was to get to crisis point and then the crisis team would get involved. But it seemed crazy to us that children had to get to that point before they could get help.

“We are in the fortunate position of being able to afford to pay to get quick help for Seb. Other people are not so fortunate.”

After a few sessions with a psychologist, Steve and Natasha were told that their son was through the worst and no longer needed their regular support.

But Steve, who still has counselling at Oakdale to deal with what happened with Seb, couldn’t get rid of the feeling that there were children out there not able to access the support they could get for their son.

“I wanted to do something to raise awareness of the work of the Oakdale Centre, but also to raise funds.

“Just £750 enables us to help provide eight week long courses in schools designed to help young people and if we can raise more than £5,000 we can get a counsellor designated to a school for a whole year.”

Steve wanted to do something unusual to raise the money and as a keen golfer he came up with the idea of doing a round of golf every day for a year.

“I am lucky that I am a member at Headingly Golf Club as they stay open all year round, not all clubs do, especially as I was starting my challenge on November 21.”

Steve, a qualified solicitor, runs his own business so planned to do a round of golf - which takes roughly three hours - first thing in the morning.

But not long into his challenge his wife broke her ankle and was unable to drive and so Steve has to do the school run before playing golf and then do some work before doing the school pick up in the afternoon.

He has played in the dark and has also had some extreme weather to contend with.

“I am only a few months in and yet I have already had three named storms to play through, as well as snow and floods.”

When he can Steve tries to play a couple of rounds in a day just in case there are days he cannot play. He is currently just over a third of the way through having played 122 of the 366 rounds. He is not always alone and is supported by other Headingly players.

“I have met new people who have kindly asked me to join their group at times.”

He is nearly half way to his £10,000 target.

Seb, now 14, is doing his bit to raise awareness of mental health issues in teenagers. He gives talks at his school and is supportive of his dad’s fund-raising.

One in eight people aged under 19 in England have a mental health disorder, according to the first official statistics to be published for 13 years.

The figures, based on a survey of 9,117 children and young people, showed the incidence of disorders rose to one in six for people aged 17 to 19.

Boys were found to be more likely to have a mental health disorder than girls until the age of 11. Between 11 and 16 both sexes were equally likely to have a mental health disorder, but by the time they reached 17 to 19, girls were more than twice as likely to have a disorder.

Within this age range, almost one in four girls had a mental disorder, and half of those said they had self-harmed or attempted suicide.

Steve says he would also like to see some sort of formal training for teachers to help them spot signs of mental problems in their students and know what to do.

“There are some schools doing some really great stuff, but it doesn’t seem to be across the board. We need to take mental health and children’s mental well being in particular, really, really seriously.”

To follow Steve’s challenge visit https://wellbeinggolf.com/

To sponsor him visit www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/counsellingforkids?utm_term=dpg8PMqz7