Claire Anstey, a 44-year-old from Beckenham, south-east London, has launched a men’s mental health app called the Wisdom Gym, with £20,000 of her personal fund.
She was left heartbroken when her ex-boyfriend, Aaron Kinnaird, took his own life in 2004. The incident turned her world upside down, and she became an advocate for men’s mental health as a way of grieving.
Claire designed the Wisdom Gym app to help men with their mental health, aiming to create an easy format for men to help them thrive and keep their mental health in check.
Claire got involved with the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) in 2006 and organised a charity comedy event called ‘Stand Up To Stop Suicide’ in the next year.
The event, where various famous comedians performed at the Clapham Grand, raised over £30,000. She quit her job as an ITV presenter in 2015 to retrain in hypnotherapy, and she’s now fully qualified and invested £20,000 of her own money in designing and launching the Wisdom Gym app.
The app allows men to access on-demand workouts for mental health based on their feelings. Users can remain completely anonymous, and six therapists can be booked for one-on-one sessions via the app.
The concept is to provide men with a safe and comfortable space to improve their mental health without being forced to speak out about how they feel.
Claire feels that the approach of telling men to reach out and be vocal about their issues isn’t working, as the suicide rate is still rapidly increasing.
She has employed a group of therapists who created the classes and are available 24/7 for guidance and advice. The app features a range of videos that can be accessed on demand, each based on different moods.
Claire hopes that the Wisdom Gym can help men with their mental health, and the app offers a way for men to get help privately and anonymously if they prefer.
She believes that this is a real opportunity to make a dent in the crisis and prevent guys like Aaron from reaching a point where it’s too late to seek help.
»London Woman Creates Men’s Mental Health App in Memory of Ex-Boyfriend Who Died by Suicide«