Heart on My Sleeve founder Mitch Wallis on how he turned his mental health around in two years

MOSMAN resident and passionate mental health advocate Mitch Wallis writes about how the glamorous perception of his life didn’t match the turmoil he was experiencing within.

Mitch Wallis is the founder of mental health charity Heart on My Sleeve.

Ahead of Heart On My Sleeve’s second Black Tie Ball in April, Mosman resident and passionate mental health advocate Mitch Wallis writes about how the glamorous perception of his life didn’t match the turmoil he was experiencing within. The Marist College, North Sydney graduate became the youngest intern at Microsoft when he was 19, and rose to become the company’s Seattle-based global product marketing manager by his mid-20s. In May 2017, Wallis founded the Heart On My Sleeve Movement to encourage people to share their challenges with mental health via social media and double the number of people seeking help in the next five years.

The greatest public health threat in Australia happens to be one that one in four of us are intimately familiar with; the mental health epidemic.

I feel incredibly lucky that every day I get to work on changing the face of mental health in Australia. It was only two years ago that my life was very different.

On the outside I had it all, I was flying around the world business class working for Microsoft, living in the USA and mixing with the rich and famous. Despite the outward success that people saw, my inside world was a complete mess and had been since I was seven years old. This was when I was first touched by mental health, with intense and debilitating symptoms.

Over the years, I’ve dealt with OCD, depression, extreme anxiety and more which has seen me contemplate taking my own life, all while people on the outside looking in thought that I was living ‘the dream’. My dream was very different; I just wanted to feel like everything was going to be OK, and that I was “enough”.

Mitch Wallis on the day he resigned from Microsoft in 2016.

This battle became too heavy, so I quit my job, moved back in with my parents in Mosman and made a video where I told the story of what my life was really like in the hope that someone could relate to my experience, and subsequently give them the confidence to know they are not alone.

In one week, that video reached over 1 million people, and a month later a global movement called Heart On My Sleeve started where people all over the world started drawing and tattooing hearts on their arms and telling their story.

I realised through this process that it’s not the illness we get trapped in, it’s the narrative we tell our self. When we take ourselves out of the plotline we’ve created filled with unfounded blame, shame and guilt that paralyses us and instead relate to someone else that understands us, we start to make sense of who we really are.

Mitch Wallis in his home at Mosman.

In 18 months Heart On My Sleeve is now one of the fastest growing mental health organisations in Australia. We have helped hundreds of people around the world transform their lives.

The reason why this resonates so much is because it’s authentic. We aren’t sitting around waiting for people to ask if we are okay. We are proactively inspiring people to find their voice, reach out and ask for help, and to take accountability for their wellbeing.

What we are aiming to do is simple, but it’s not easy. Our mission is to double the number of people seeking help from 30 per cent to 60 per cent in the next five years, while transforming a global conversation around mental health. This is not only what we tell ourselves about our journey and making sure it’s authentic, but also how we communicate with others. The only way to eradicate this demon is by sharing real and authentic conversations and experiences with others and ourselves.

New Year’s Eve Party 2016, Mitch Wallis, DJ-ing.

We have plenty in the works with our growing movement, from online learning, to podcasts and peer support programs. The fun part is: we are just getting started.

On the 6th April 2019 we are hosting our second Black Tie Ball at the International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour, to help raise funds for the work will do in 2019 and beyond.

Mental health is a cause close to everyone’s heart and one so many Australians have been personally touched by. If you know just one person who has suffered their own battle with mental health in any way, we ask you to join forces with us by attending our Black Tie Ball and fight against this national epidemic taking the lives of Australians. Your attendance brings us closer to reaching our goal and genuinely will make a difference in the future of our movement and the lives of one in four Australians.

■ Heart On My Sleeve’s second Black Tie Ball, is on Saturday April 6 at the International Convention Centre in Darling Harbour. Tickets are available at https://events.humanitix.com.au/homsbtb

Mitch Wallis runs the 2016 New York Marathon.