Earlier this year I lost my friend Olisa Odukwe to suicide. Olisa was a key senior member of the men's football club at the University of Bristol, loved and respected by a lot of people but also viewed as a strong, driven character and a hugely positive role model in our football club and in his friend groups. His suicide had a profound and lifelong impact on many people.
Coming to terms with the suicide of a friend at such a young age is a very difficult and complicated form of grief and I wished that no young person would ever have to experience it. Yet, each year more students enter new battles with mental health and unfortunately many continue to lose their battle.
To improve many people's lives and maybe even save some, I want to raise the standards for mental health at university and at UBAFC. If you are reading this and are a university student, or are any human being for that matter, please don't make the mistake that I made by assuming that my friend, who appeared to be doing alright, was in fact doing alright. You never know what's going on in someone's life until you check in on them.
When we lost Olisa I realised how often we all have the same conversation time and again at uni. I realised that there's so many people around me that I call a friend that I haven't spoken to about anything other than football.
There are over 100 male members at our football club and we can improve each others mental health first and foremost by getting to know each other more personally and normalizing conversations about mental health. Maybe then we can learn together how best to talk through our problems and foster an environment where everyone knows that it's okay not to be okay. We can all help each other out and with such a big support network available, we can make a huge difference to so many people's health. There's no problem so big that can't be solved. And obviously, this doesn't only apply to UBAFC - whichever group you are involved in, you can make a big difference too.
I will be participating in the standard Movember Mo and I will look rubbish. But it's not about that, it's about encouraging those conversations. All donations will be going to a worthwhile cause. Thanks in advance to anyone who chooses to donate x
Best of luck, Cam!! So sorry for the loss of your friend, Olisa! What better way to pay him tribute though, than by raising funds and awareness for such a noble and relevant cause in his name! So proud of you!!
Best of luck, Cam!! So sorry for the loss of your friend, Olisa! What better way to pay him tribute though, than by raising funds and awareness for such a noble and relevant cause in his name! So proud of you!!