At Macdonald Macmillan Training, our mission is to provide exceptional training services that empowers individuals, employers and organisations to create safer cultures without stigma and with the skills to raise awareness, spot the signs of poor mental health and intervene effectively before someone reaches the point of crisis.
We started delivering Scotland’s “gold standard” mental health first aid training and suicide prevention courses to help grow the network of people in communities who want to learn these skills and gain the confidence to change and save lives.
Hello I am Gary Macdonald and I am from the wee Ayrshire village of Dunlop (famous for the cheese).I am married with two daughters and am now called Pappou as our first grandchild arrived last year.
I started work in the travel industry and managed to fulfill a dream of taking a year out with my wife to travel around the world, milking cows in New Zealand along the way.
I have also worked for the Civil Service where my roles became directly linked to mental health as a community partner for mental health and then as the Health and Wellbeing Lead for DWP in Scotland. I then spent a year working with the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) as part of the distress brief intervention team.
My lived experience of poor mental health began after the loss of my mum to cancer over 30 years ago. Back then there wasn’t the support there is now to help mental wellbeing after a bereavement and men weren’t encouraged to talk about how they felt. I can say now I struggled for over two decades with depression but tried to mask it on a daily basis which was exhausting.
With the support of my wife I eventually went to the doctor, got help and started on a road to recovery.
I then became aware of See Me, Scotlands leading mental health organisation who were looking for volunteer community champions. This set me on a course of action focusing on improving mental health support at work, becoming a mental health first aider and an ASIST & Safe TALK caregiver which led to then being selected to become a qualified trainer. Then my journey took a different direction after the tragic loss of my cousin to suicide. Realising that there was a need for a support group in Glasgow that would provides a safe place for men to talk about their challenges and be listened to,I co founded MindtheMen and continue to facilitate group meetings to this day.Making the decision to change occupations and start Macdonald & MacMillan Training with my good friend Des MacMillan has been a life changing experience and adventure. I am very proud of all the people we have helped train and know that the impact they will have made in their communities will have changed and I’m sure saved lives.
My name is Diarmid but everyone call’s me Des. I am a father of three young adults and live in the small town of Oban in Argyll & Bute. I worked at sea for 30 years
doing various skippering roles around the West coast of Scotland. I loved the freedom of the sea and the challenges it brought.
My journey with mental ill-health started when I was 8 years old and had lost my grandfather to pancreatic cancer.
The sudden loss of someone that I loved and was very close to was extremely difficult to deal with and it felt like my life had been ripped apart. I was lost
without him and I struggled to sleep, eat or function. I reached the point where I needed help from a GP who advised my parents I was just grieving and I would get better in time, this didn’t happen. I was ill for a number of years with many trips to
psychiatrists and specialists but nothing ever really seemed to help me.
I got to the point where I seemed to be ill and anxious every single minute of the day and life was tough. Growing older I
learned to live with anxiety and just accepted this was how I was going to be for the rest of my life. I managed to work and get by masking my pain.
I had a successful career at sea but Stigma was something I had to deal with a lot and I didn’t feel I could ever talk to anyone about what was happening to me or how I was feeling so I kept quiet and
suffered in silence. I got married, I had kids, I played sports, worked hard but constantly struggled with my anxiety.
In 2015 I decided I had had enough and thought that death was the
only answer to ending my suffering.
I decided to take my own life.
Thankfully I never went through with this
and I broke down in tears and reached out for extra help.
Support came in the form of a treatment called EMDR (Eye Movement
Desensitization and Reprocessing). This treatment saved my life. Life got much better and I was able to control my anxiety.
I then decided if I could be helped then so could others so I decided to share my experiences to help people that might be going through the same thing. I joined a charity called “See Me Scotland”
which was amazing and a great starting point to learn and meet likeminded people,
It was here that I met my good friend, and now business partner Gary Macdonald.
I set up and ran a mens mental health peer support group in Oban which was extremely powerful. I am now the founder and chairperson of a Suicide prevention and mental health support charity called
“Argyll Wellbeing Hub” in Oban which provides many types of support to the community. This I am very proud of.
I learned skills to help those struggling with suicidal ideations and those that were struggling with their mental health through
completing Mental Health First Aid and Suicide intervention
training.
This is where Gary and I decided we would work towards setting up Macdonald & MacMillan training to allow us to deliver these life saving skills to others.
I love to deliver our courses to people from all different backgrounds and job roles. We work with all different sectors and we meet amazing people. The
thing I love most about this job is that we get to equip people like us with skills that can and will save someone's life should they be in crisis.
I have learnt from personal experience the importance of interventions to help someone recognise they need support and that life can get better.
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