SHILLINGTON, Pa. – A Berks County man just spent five days and fifteen hours running across the state, all in the name of mental health.<\/p>\n
28-year-old Brendan Morgan of Shillington says many times throughout his run across Pennsylvania he was compared to Forrest Gump. But unlike Gump, who just felt like running, Morgan was on a mission.<\/p>\n
“To raise awareness for mental health and to show that no matter how hard of a time that you’re having, you can push through everything no matter what,” said Morgan.<\/p>\n
He says he began planning about a year ago and by spring, things turned more serious. On Saturday, he began his more than 340-mile trek across the state, starting in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n
He finished Thursday night at Washington Crossing Bridge.<\/p>\n
“During it, it felt like it was lasting an eternity, but I’m so sad that it’s over already,” said Morgan. “I can’t believe it went by that fast.”<\/p>\n
His journey helped raise money and awareness for the National Alliance of Mental Illness. It’s a cause he has a personal connection with.<\/p>\n
“I lost my dad when I was very young and then I lost my brother to suicide,” said Morgan. “Then I tried to commit suicide myself when I was in high school.”<\/p>\n
His journey through life, much like his race across the state, hasn’t been easy, but with the right support he wants people to know they can do anything.<\/p>\n
“I went out there and was just the athlete, but I would never be out there and doing what I’m doing without the support I had from everybody,” said Morgan. “So, it’s not an ‘I’ thing, it’s always going to be a ‘we’ thing.”<\/p>\n
He encourages anyone struggling with their mental health to reach out to someone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SHILLINGTON, Pa. – A Berks County man just spent five days and fifteen hours running across the state,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[8107,152065,97,259,260,3234,7383,150310],"class_list":["post-294159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-berks","tag-brendan-morgan","tag-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pittsburgh","tag-shillington"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}