Benjamin Williams

20 hours of silence, for youth mental health.

I'm doing the 20 hours for 20talk challenge.

20 hours in a 2x2 metre square. in a warehouse. with 400 other people. no talking, no phone, no distractions.

just a chair, a mat, a journal, water and food. whatever i carry in is all i get.

20 hours of silence and isolation.

and if i'm honest, that part isn't completely foreign to me.

when i was younger i spent a long time sitting with something i couldn't say out loud. working out who i was as a gay man, mostly on my own, with no one around me who'd been through it and come out the other side.

it wasn't 20 hours. it was years.

i got through it. but i'd have given almost anything back then for someone to tell me that what i was feeling was normal, and that asking for help wasn't weakness.

that's the whole reason i'm doing this.

most of us have been near this in some way. it gets dark and lonely and heavy, and the numbers still aren't good enough.

suicide is the leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 44.

only 2% of mental health funding goes towards prevention (mental health commission, 2022).

your donation goes straight to 20talk. a mental health charity that makes the education actually land. built for young people, by young people. the thing i could've used.

here's where it goes:

$120 puts one young person through a full-day mental health maintenance course

it grows their free online resources and 60,000+ community

it funds the big interactive events

more at www.20talk.com.au

thanks for reading this far. if you can throw something in, thank you.

and if you're sitting with something right now that you feel like you can't say. you can. i'm here. love you all.