{"id":143996,"date":"2025-11-20T02:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T02:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143996\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T02:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T02:24:07","slug":"west-midlands-man-who-battled-depression-hails-outdoor-swimming-for-changing-his-life-heres-why","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143996\/","title":{"rendered":"West Midlands man who battled depression hails outdoor swimming for changing his life &#8211; here&#8217;s why"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A man who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.expressandstar.com\/news\/health\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">battled depression<\/a> and alcohol abuse for years before <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shropshirestar.com\/news\/health\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">attempting suicide<\/a> has credited outdoor swimming for changing his life.<\/p>\n<p>Richard Williams, from Worcestershire, joined a research project looking at the impact of the activity on depression and anxiety after a chance encounter with an old friend.<\/p>\n<p>The 42-year-old is now sober and recently married, and uses cold water to manage his stress.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Williams was depressed for years before realising he had mental health problems and started drinking heavily in 2018.<\/p>\n<p>He was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which causes extreme mood changes.<\/p>\n<p>In March 2022, Mr Williams tried to take his own life. He said: \u201cI got to the point where I was like, this is it, I\u2019m no good.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to end it all. I had a couple of attempts to end it all. Fortunately, they weren\u2019t successful.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>After surviving the attempt, Mr Williams started working on himself and tried exercise, medication and therapy as part of his recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who battled depression and alcohol abuse for years before attempting suicide has credited outdoor swimming for&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[134,554,555,111,43,139,69,1252],"class_list":{"0":"post-143996","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143996"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143996\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}