Mental health awareness week: “Networks are crucial to help you get through”

This year Mental Health Awareness Week (12–18 May) is focused on the power of community in helping us take care of our wellbeing. In recognition of this, OT asked members of the profession to share one of the communities that is important to them.

It is a tough thing to do. The tenor bell at Southwark Cathedral, for example, is more than 48cwts, or about 2.5 tonnes. That is like a heavy car. It will take you off the ground if you get it wrong – you have got to concentrate. It is a skill you have to be taught.

A quarter peal is 45 minutes long and you can’t stop during it. You have to remember the method (the pattern of changes) and ring in time with everyone else; we don’t use a musical score or any visual aids. When you are in the zone you can’t think about anything else; it is like meditation. Then afterwards we all pop down the road for refreshments.

Learning to ring coincided with being president of the College of Optometrists, which brought me to London often. Ringing was a great thing to do in the evenings. I would visit different towers and met people who have become lifelong friends.

I like the challenge, but what I really enjoy is helping others. It is a really good feeling to turn up at a practice, particularly if you are unexpected, and help ring. I am chairman of the western branch of the Yorkshire Association of Change Ringers and we run courses and taster sessions all the time.

Last summer my wife, Riz, died very suddenly. She was fit and healthy, and her death was a total shock for me and her family. The ringing community has been incredible – everyone came together to support me and remember her. Riz wasn’t a ringer. On the night of Riz’s funeral they rang a full peal for her at Leeds Cathedral. That is three hours of ringing.

In 2024, I rang 48 quarter peals, one for each year of Riz’s life. We had ringers from Yorkshire, London, Cheshire, and even a visiting ringer from New Zealand taking part in this tribute to Riz. The last quarter peal was on 22 December on our home village bells in Oxenhope, which was really special. There is a permanent record on our ringing database and by Christmas day, that performance was the most rated quarter peal in the world. Ringing the quarter peals helped me to acknowledge what had happened.

We had ringers from Yorkshire, London, Cheshire, and even a visiting ringer from New Zealand taking part in this tribute to Riz

Riz was one of four siblings. Her mum and dad moved here from Pakistan, first moving to Southampton before settling in Bradford. We are a close family, and even closer now. Riz studied social anthropology at the University of Sussex and became the academic quality business partner for the Faculty of Engineering and Digital Technology at the University of Bradford. That is how we met. My department used to be on the F floor in the Richmond Building and she was on the E floor.

Riz had a real eye for design. She was very into music and art. I got her into musical theatre, and we saw various musicals together. She taught me to have a work-life balance. Before we really knew each other she knew which car was mine because it would be in the car park at half past seven in the morning and still there when she left in the evening. Now I need to keep that balance going. The job is intense at times, but you have to balance it out.

You need to face it because it’s part of the deal: the price of love is grief

I had great support from people over the past year – from my ringing friends, colleagues from my previous career in theatre, and from eye care practitioners. I have had so much support from the optometry and ophthalmic dispensing community. That support is very therapeutic and helps you to face what has happened. I think the worst thing you can do is try and put it away in a box and not think about it. You need to face it because it’s part of the deal: the price of love is grief.

In due course I want to try and use the experience I have had to try and help others. Riz was all about positivity and trying to make the best of things. If I could use this experience to help others in the future – I think she would approve.

We need to back each other up. Particularly in eye care and for optometrists, with many shut away in little rooms all day, it can be isolating. There are pressures on eye care practitioners. It can be a lonely, stressful place sometimes. Networks are crucial to help you get through.

*As told to Kimberley Young