A FORMER social worker will lead a series of walking events in Scotland this week to encourage people to talk about mental health.

Backed by See Me, Scotland’s national programme to end mental health stigma and discrimination, Chris McCullough Young will head a walk in Coatbridge tomorrow and two in Glasgow on Wednesday.

On the walks mental health professionals, service users and all interested people will come together and, in Young’s words, “break down stigma and rediscover how fabulous people are” through the act of conversation.

The walks are inspired by the simple idea of different people sharing a social space and by the Chinese aphorism: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked two moons in his moccasins."

For McCullough Young, walking has personal significance. It distracts him from dissociating – a major symptom of the borderline personality disorder he was diagnosed with in 2008 while working as a senior social worker in Polmont.

Explaining dissociation, McCullough Young says: “I’ll start looking at my hand and I think, ‘I don’t think that’s real. As I become unreal, the world becomes unreal. I become emotionless and have no feelings.”

Talking about dissociation – which can last anything between an hour and three weeks – is the first step towards understanding and then managing the condition, something his partner Ella is key to.

When, in April 2011, McCullough Young set off from his home in Edinburgh to walk around the edge of the UK with the aim of challenging perceptions about mental health, Ella called him three times a day from her home in Warwick.

“She could tell by the tone of my voice how she has came to my rescue several times,” he says, having explained he chose to walk around the edge of the UK as people experiencing mental health problems often feel like they’re “on the edge”.

Apart from eleven packets of noodles and an emergency five-pound note Ella had surreptitiously hidden in his first aid kit, McCullough Young relied completely on the kindness of strangers. He was not disappointed.

“A woman had seen me walking across the Forth Bridge and asked me what on earth I was doing. She gave me £10 and told me to get something to eat in the restaurant in the village [North Queensferry]. She didn’t even know my name. When I got there, another woman piped up and said, ‘Keep your £10, I’m going to buy you your tea. You’re going to listen to my story'. And she told me about how she’d been abused as a child and had been a victim of domestic violence.”

McCullough Young continues: “It was then that I realised that this was not about my story, it was about everyone’s story and giving them the opportunity to talk and be listened to. Very often we find we can’t talk to those closest to us, because we’re maybe afraid of hurting the person, or that they may judge us. But a wandering lunatic is an ideal candidate to speak about this stuff to.”

The kindness of strangers followed McCullough Young around the coast of Scotland, where families invited him into their homes, people let him camp in their gardens, and a woman upon seeing him coming out of his tent simply asked him whether he wanted bubbles in the bath she’d just run for him.

At the end of his walk around Scotland the five pound note remained with the plasters and antiseptic wipes. He has it to this day.

A premiere of a 45-minute film following McCullough Young’s journey so far will be screened as part of the Dust of Everyday Life, a mental health and arts day event held at Glasgow’s CCA on Wednesday. A full feature-length film, directed by Swedish filmmaker Johanna Wagner, will be ready in time for October’s Scottish Mental Health Arts and Film Festival.

Attendees to the Dust of Everyday Life are encouraged to join the Walk A Mile event at Glasgow Green at 6pm. Set to be even bigger than last year’s first Walk A Mile event in Edinburgh, where over 400 people including SNP MP Tommy Sheppard walked down the Royal Mile chatting to strangers about mental health, it will follow a similar walking and talking event held earlier in the day at Strathclyde University.

McCullough Young’s journey of 4,000 miles has so far taken five years, as it is dependent, like much else of his life, on his health.

“Before I started the walk I had this notion I was cured but it turned out I was still nuts," he says.

McCullough Young frequently uses terms such as “crazy” and “nuts” to describe his state when his health isn’t good.

“I think as a society we’ve confused ourselves when it comes to language,” he says. “I don’t care what people call me. It’s the attitude that matters. Just because someone uses a particular word doesn’t necessarily mean their attitude is a certain way. 'Crazy' is not necessarily a negative word. Sometimes people say to me, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you don’t look like one’. I’ll say, ‘What were you expecting, a trap-door with a cuckoo coming out of it?’ For me, it’s all part of the dialogue.

"We mustn’t stop communication. This is all about talking to folk, and allowing them to use the words they want. If we’re measuring language we’ve lost the point."

"People are paralysed with political correctness. One of the games I use in workshops is to get people to shout out disparaging words for those with poor mental health. People know all the words. There’s even a website collecting them all. But when people know I have a mental health problem they won’t use them. Sometimes I even have stooges in the audience shouting out things like ‘windy-licker’. That’s what I want to challenge. It’s like the Metropolitan Police in London. The language they use is so politically correct but it doesn’t stop the fact that, if you’re black, you’re seven times more likely to be stopped and searched.”

Walk A Mile was established as a charity in 2015 and plans to extend throughout England and Wales to create a network of people leading dialogue walks to challenging mental health stigma “one conversation at a time”. But many people experiencing mental health problems find conversation difficult, never mind conversation with complete strangers.

So how does McCullough Young recommend we start? “You don’t have to talk about mental health. If you’re stuck for something to say, just say ‘What brings you here?’ And you’ll find that everyone has a story.”