Men's mental health: Man aims to raise awareness after suicide attempt

Barney Pallot says being part of a close family has helped him through

A 22-year-old man who survived a suicide attempt says he is determined to raise awareness of men's health.

Barney Pallot, from Northamptonshire, tried to take his life two years ago.

Thanks to the support he received from family, friends and medical professionals, he says he is now "doing well".

He says he wants to do everything he can to make sure other men start talking about their problems and get help.

Barney remembers very little of the events of that day in November 2021.

For his father Chris, on the other hand, the memory is only too clear.

"We got a knock on the door, it was four o'clock in the morning, I asked who was outside and they said 'it's the police'," he said.

The officers told Chris, who is an NHS manager, that Barney was in hospital in Sheffield. Before setting off with Barney's mother, Mr Pallot phoned intensive care.

"They told me Barney's heart had stopped and they'd managed to start it again, but he was very sick indeed," he said.

Barney was in intensive care for two weeks, and his family was preparing for the worst. His parents spent a lot of time talking and playing music to him.

Chris told BBC Radio Northampton: "Barney and I went to see the Foo Fighters many years ago, and one of our favourite songs by them is Everlong and I played that to him, and I could see his brain wave increasing [on the monitor] when I did that."

The Foo Fighters' track Everlong stimulated Barney's brain in intensive care, his father said

Barney said that song now has even greater meaning for him: "It's a song that I still love, and it's something that makes me emotional when I hear it because I always think of my dad when that song plays now."

His brain also reacted to videos specially recorded for him by Leicester Tigers rugby players, including George Ford and Dan Cole.

Those signs of Barney's brain reacting turned out to be the first indications that a recovery was not only possible, but actually happening.

George Ford was one of the Leicester Tigers players who recorded a video for Barney

Two years later, Barney says he is "doing well" and raising money for Movember, the annual campaign for men's mental health.

He said: "If one person out there can hear someone who has gone through the worst, if that can then trigger something in their mind, to think 'you know what, I need to talk about it, and get that help', and if it prevents them from taking their own life, that would be the end goal for me."

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