ROLE MODELS
Dr Alex George talks to Psychologies about empowering young people to feel more positive, prioritising his own mental health, and why he believes communication is the key
Interview
Dr Alex George, the Government’s youth mental health ambassador, social media star, and author of bestselling self-help guides for adults and children, is reflecting on the measures he’s taken to look after his own wellbeing.
He has weekly therapy, gave up alcohol a year ago, takes medication for ADHD – which was diagnosed 18 months ago, and explains a lot about his struggles growing up – and is still grieving for his 19-year-old brother, Llŷr, who died by suicide in 2020, just as he was about to start medical school.
‘I’ve had to prioritise my own mental health above everything else, in order to be able to do everything else,’ explains the 32-year-old former Love Island star, who hails from Carmarthen, Wales. But he has a good team around him and puts his health first, he adds.
‘I have therapy, I get support, I prioritise sleep and exercise,’ says George, who also hosts the walking and wellness podcast Stompcast. ‘But there are ups and downs. I still go through difficult times.
‘The anniversaries are hard. Christmas is hard. We sit around the dinner table and, you know, my brother was 10 years younger than me and should be at that table. It’s very hard to sit there and not feel that pain. I don’t think that ever goes away.’
That terrible event was just one of the factors that sparked George’s determination to help people who are suffering with mental health issues, and in 2021, then-prime minister Boris Johnson appointed George youth ambassador for mental health, helping to shape mental health policy for young people.
George’s debut book for children, A Better Day (Wren & Rook, £9.99), a positive mental health handbook, was a Sunday Times bestseller and went on to win the Children’s Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022. He has now written the follow-up, A Better Day Journal (Wren & Rook, £8.99), comprising fun and calming activities, exercises including mindfulness and visualisation, and a range of techniques to deal with anxiety, as well as a mood journal.
Despite this success, he says: ‘One of the things I try and tell people is that I’m not sitting here as an author or as an ambassador telling you that I have everything sorted, and do this and your life will be perfect, because in reality life is hard – things happen, and we have to learn how to deal with them.
‘My brother passed away almost four years ago now, and I went from y
