The 56-year-old said he had suffered from depression and anxiety most of his life but that it had been manageable up until 18 months ago. <\/p>\n
Hughes gave up work to try to give himself the time and space to recover, but that made his mental health problems worse.<\/p>\n
He said: “I thought it would be good for me to take myself out of the work situation.<\/p>\n
“For a while it was, but then you notice the negative affects of being isolated.<\/p>\n
“You just become isolated from the world. You’re doom scrolling half of the day. I’d got no purpose anymore.”<\/p>\n
Hughes says he begged his GP for something other than more tablets to help get him back on his feet. <\/p>\n
That’s when he met the social prescribing team.<\/p>\n
He said: “At my first WorkWell session, I was extremely anxious. I was on the verge of a panic attack and ready to bolt. But the team sat me down, calmed me, and supported me to stay. <\/p>\n
“That moment was a turning point. I knew then that I had to try, even though it felt daunting.”<\/p>\n
Through simple activities like gardening groups, walk-and-talk sessions and volunteering, he gradually rebuilt confidence, routine and social connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 56-year-old said he had suffered from depression and anxiety most of his life but that it had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":360653,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[163,85,46,522,523],"class_list":["post-360652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360652","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360652"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360652\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/360653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}