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Being involved in Focus 4 1 has truly changed my life. What makes this group so special is that it’s fully owned and run by people like me-those with lived experience of mental health challenges. This creates an environment where I feel genuinely understood and supported. Through taking part in member-led activities and wellness programmes, I’ve learned to treat myself with kindness and compassion, which has been vital for my recovery.

Focus 4 1 has also inspired me to use the skills I’ve developed over the years to support others. Helping and enabling people who are facing similar struggles gives me a real sense of purpose and empowerment. One of the things I value most is how the group helps reduce social isolation. Connecting with others who truly understand what I’m going through has allowed me to build meaningful friendships and feel part of a caring community. The safe, non-judgmental atmosphere lets me be myself, no matter what kind of day I’m having.

Beyond peer support, Focus 4 1 offers various well-being services like exercise and wellness activities that help me maintain both my physical and mental health. Because the group is entirely run by service users, the support feels authentic and tailored to our needs. Focus 4 1 also provides an alternative and complementary service alongside traditional NHS mental health care. The outreach and personalised support have helped me prevent crises and stay out of hospital more than once.

Our partnerships with other organisations mean we have a strong voice when it comes to influencing local NHS policies, ensuring people like me are heard. Being part of Focus 4 1 has helped me find more meaning in my life by opening up opportunities to get involved in the wider community, learn new skills, and build my confidence. I’ve grown so much, developing independence and resilience beyond just coping with mental health challenges. Learning to be compassionate to myself has also helped me be more empathetic toward others, which strengthens our whole community.

A big part of why Focus 4 1 has flourished over the last twelve years is thanks to Vanessa Anenden, the founder. She started this group to support people like me who’ve felt marginalised due to mental health, emotional, or institutional challenges. Through creative expression, Vanessa helps us challenge stigma and overcome barriers. She works incredibly hard and now trains many members, some of whom I’ve known for years, to take leadership roles. Seeing these people grow and lead makes me proud to be part of this inspiring movement. Focus 4 1 has also received several awards over the years. I’ve had the privilege of joining them on award ceremony occasions, which is a proud experience for me. I truly believe this group will continue to thrive and remain an award-winning, user-led complement to NHS therapies for many years to come. Mental health can be isolating, but with the support of Focus 4 1, I’ve learned that recovery is a journey from surviving to thriving. This has been my experience, and I hope others will find the same strength and community by getting involved. 

Ginnie

 

Is happiness a thing of the past-

Good times we had just wish they could have last-

In contact with everyone around-

In mind mental motions vision and sound-

The Angels feed my energies –

Angry-

Whilst absorbing all that’s bad-

In and around me-

Just had another mind flash-

Like an advert on TV-

Still no cash-

Who’s watching

Who’s got the keys to keep changing the channels of my mind-

Which seems to be in disarray –

The old man says look up to the sky and pray…

Who writes the blurb-who then directs- cancels –corrects

Who’s got the push –

Who’s got the drive –

Who’s got the ingredients to stay alive-

Who’s got the nerve –

Who avoids the swerve-

Who’s the watcher the Actor in reserve

Stand up-

 Sit down-

Look all around-

Do you hear the inner sound-

The voices come through the walls-

Come through the floors-

Surrounded by non-imaginary beings-

Not really knowing what they mean-

Attempting to calm down-

And not to be too keen –

My eyes aren’t my eyes no more- –

My eyes aren’t my eyes no more-

I said

‘MY EYES ARNT MY EYES NO MORE’ …

They belong to the forces out there

A scientific crucified stare-

Stand up-

Sit down-

Go look around-

Do you hear the inner sound-

Inner sound

Inner sound

Clinton

 

As a mature male struggling with mental health life living in a city like London can make you feel small and shut away especially as you get older. Most of the time, I felt alone and didn’t have much reason to make plans.  It’s not easy finding places where you really feel welcome or needed. That all changed for me when I joined Focus 4-1. Focus 4-1 is not your usual group. The best thing about us is that everyone involved is also a service user – we all have a say, and we all help to run things together.  We all learn to make a safe space to  support each other. When I turned up for the first time, I felt a bit nervous and anxious I wondered, will I fit in here? Can I actually make friends still? But everyone was friendly and made me feel like I belonged. It’s a place where your story and experience matter and counts. People listen. No one looks down on you. One of the best things that happened was being encouraged to get involved in research with the group. I’d never done anything like it before. Most times when you hear “research”, you think of people in labs or offices – not people like us. But at Focus 4-1, we do research to help people just like ourselves, and it makes you feel useful. I had a reason to look forward to the day in the morning and something real to focus on. Doing this work helped me feel stronger and useful I’ve met others around my age who’ve had tough times too. We talk, we laugh, we sometimes have a moan, but most importantly, we share and help each other feel less alone. It’s good to know you’re not the only one feeling the way you do.We do more than just sit and chat. We plan little events, we find ways to get people out of their homes, and we try to help each other keep going. Being part of Focus 4-1 has given me my confidence back. I feel good knowing I make a difference, even in small ways. If anyone out there is feeling stuck, I’d say give a group like ours a try. It’s not always easy taking the first step but Focus 4-1 has really helped me find purpose and friends when I needed them most. I’m proud to be part of Focus 4-1. It’s shown me that everyone has something to offer, and when we work together, we really can change our lives for the better.. 

Stephen

 

I am a 61 year old woman who has lived experience of mental health. I first struggled in 2016 after my father died. Everything around me seemed to be moving fast. As a result, I wanted to escape my environment which I shared with my hubby and two sons. I thought they wanted to harm me, so I found myself walking from Tooting to the west end I seemed to have excess energy I do not know where it came from. Naturally at this time my family were very concerned for my wellbeing. I talked in very weird sentences not making any sense. At that time, I had an overactive imagination thinking all bizarre things. I thought my hubby wanted to kill me and that he ran trafficking racket. He actually works in IT. 

I did manage to go to therapy, but it did not work. Fast forward 2017 my mother died and I became ill again this time I was sectioned and was in hospital for 28 days I was frightened didn’t want to see anyone and refused medication at first, but weeks in I started on meds. I was slowly seeing sense and started finger knitting to pass time. I also read my Bible and prayed in the grounds of the hospital it was calming. 

I was eventually discharged and slowly began to feel a lot better. I would frequent the hospital’s gym it was a great boost for my self-esteem.

Fast forward to 2019 I was invited to Focus 41 it was and still is a life saver a support group to which is led by people with lived experience.

I was shy at first but soon became more.

Focus 41 was and still is a great support I was asked to take care of the donations counting etc 

As time as gone by, I have done courses become a support worker trained in Intentional Peer Support and now I am a Wellbeing Practitioner. I thoroughly enjoy my work because it just shows with Focus 4 1s motto enabling encouraging empowering you can do anything you put your mind to with the right support. 

S.R.

My first experience of mental healthcare was in 2012, after my niece passed away. It was the day my son was starting at nursery for the first time, and while we were waiting for the bus, I saw somebody who had passed away – my husband’s uncle, and I ended up going to A&E in an ambulance. I’ve been seeing things like this since I was 12 and my father died, but the difference is that in Jamaica, it’s considered more normal to see people who have died. There is a cultural difference in this country which means it is seen differently.

At the time, I was grieving my niece. And my whole family was worried about me, so I agreed to go to A&E. I thought I was in a safe place, but it wasn’t a safe place. The clinicians were asking me about immigration. They wanted me to take a blue tablet to make me sleep, but I didn’t want to be away from my two children – I had never been away. They were staying with my neighbours and tried to explain that I was worried about them, that my niece had died and I was having marital problems.

I was being pressured to take the tablet and in the end they held me down, with a sheet over my face, and injected me. I tried to fight them – they way they were treating me made me more frightened than the things I had been seeing. But I was kept in, and over the next two weeks I was transferred to two different hospitals, ending up in a ward in Springfield, while my husband looked after my children.

It felt like a prison and I had no dignity. I felt the drugs I was being given were too much and no one listened to me. I didn’t feel there was any plan for my care either. I was on the ward for two weeks then discharged. Whie I was out, the home treatment team came to visit me, but they were quite rude and wouldn’t take their shoes off in my house. They didn’t listen to me about my medication either. I had no therapy and no one was talking to me to make sense of what had happened. And if I was a white person, would it have been the same? I feel like my experience would have been different.

Three months later, I was admitted to hospital again. After that, my husband and I divorced, and he got a court order to have the children so I was separated from them, I only saw them at weekends. I had nowhere to go and social workers were coming to talk to me about my children while I was in hospital. Sometimes I ask myself, if I had had a physical health condition, for example cancer, rather than a mental one, would I have been treated in the same way? I don’t feel like I was treated like a human.

Twelve years later, I have been admitted around five times. I am on mediation now, although I do not take as much as they want me to, and I have been well for a year. I have done a hairdressing course and I am now doing a beauty course. [can we say a bit more about how you are doing now?] But I have accepted that I may become unwell again, as it seems to happen every three years.

Last year I had the worst relapse that I’ve ever been through.

Things got so bad that they were talking about sectioning me. That word alone- sectioned is meant to send panic through you. But truth be told I was past caring. I was numb; empty; burnt out. I reached that place where nothing mattered not even the idea of being locked away.

What kept me going wasn’t a care coordinator or a crisis team/mental health team. It wasn’t any big organisation or professional swooping in to rescue me it was Intentional Peer Support. People with lived experience. People who don’t look down on me or ask me to explain everything. People who GET IT!

People who didn’t come with me with clipboards or scripts. It’s people who met me where I was, without judgement, without pressure. People who understood- not textbook people, but because they’d been there too

19 Weeks on a Waiting List- While in Crisis

While I was hanging on a thread I was also stuck on a waiting list what was meant to be 8 weeks was 20 weeks for a service that had been commissioned to “support“me. 20 weeks, 5 months!!

When they eventually called it didn’t feel like support- it felt more like an assessment they didn’t even try to build trust…they just launched into it

• Have you harmed yourself in the last……?
• Have you been suicidal?
• What are your goals
• What are your hobbies

I actually laughed when they said what are your goals/hobbies.

I didn’t know them, and they didn’t know me and that cold, clinical questioning- especially for someone in a crisis- just pushed me further into myself. I told them to speak to my team to get the answers.

And because of that?

They told my team I was “too complex to support”

Because I didn’t answer their cold, clinical questions from people I’d never met while I was in the middle of a relapse. They decided I was beyond support.

I can’t thank Focus 4-1 enough. A Director mentioned their Intentional Peer Support Practitioners and it changed everything.

They didn’t need me to explain everything they didn’t treat me like a risk or problem to manage

They treated me like a person.

They gave me space to talk or not talk. No tick box questions. Just a real connection with someone who understood what it’s like.

But even more than that they supported me to get out of the house

After weeks of being stuck inside in my own head and my four walls it was Focus 4-1 Intentional Peer Support Practitioners who gently patiently encouraged me to step outside again. No pressure. Just with presence

That might sound a small thing but when you are in that place its massive. That first step out of my front door felt like a lifeline being thrown.

That support- that HUMAN SUPPORT- is what kept me out of hospital

If you are reading this and you’ve been written off as too complex I want, you to know YOU are NOT the problem. You are a human being going through pain and deserve support that see’s your whole self, not just your symptoms

To Focus 4-1 that stood by me. You supported keep me alive. I’ll never forget that.

To the system, Start listening to us. Fund the work that’s already saving lives. Stop deciding who’s “too complex” and start asking why your services can’t meet real people where they are at.