'I was saved from suicide, but not from suicidal thoughts'

Jonny Benjamin, two years after he attempted to take his own life but was stopped by a stranger Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley

• Harry Wallop

10 January 2016 • 8:00am

It had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood tale: a young handsome, but troubled protagonist, a quest to find an anonymous hero, a large amount of despair before a remarkable, happy ending.
But #FindMike, as the tale was christened on social media, was the real-life story of Jonny Benjamin and his search for the man who had saved his life six years before. Back on a cold January morning in 2008, Benjamin, then aged 20 and suffering from a severe bout of mental illness, attempted to take his own life by leaping from Waterloo Bridge. Many commuters rushing to work walked past Benjamin. But one man didn’t: Neil Laybourn. He stopped, talked to him, and after 25 minutes persuaded Benjamin to take the step back.
In the melee that ensued – Benjamin was bundled into a waiting police car, sectioned, and taken to hospital – the two men never discovered each other’s name, let alone had the luxury of swapping contact details.
Six years later, in January 2013, Benjamin – in a better mental state – decided he wanted “close the door on that chapter of my life” and find “Mike”, his nickname for the stranger on the bridge. Thanks to the power of social media, Laybourn, now 33, was tracked down in just a couple of weeks.
The story was turned into a wonderful documentary, called Stranger on the Bridge, which was broadcast on Channel 4 last year. And, indeed, Hollywood did briefly come knocking, wanting to give this story of hope the big-screen treatment.

Man thanks stranger who saved him from suicide Play! 01:50

But the happy ending – the hugely heartfelt and cathartic meeting of Neil and Jonny, two fundamentally good people whose lives fatefully collided – had a complicated postscript.
A few months after the reunion, Benjamin, who suffers from both bipolar and schizophrenia, got progressively worse.
“Things start to creep up again,” he says. “As soon as I stood outside the door, I was crippled by paranoid thoughts and this fear of other people.”
On a tube journey, he’d catch people’s eyes and be certain these strangers were “out to get him”.  He explains: “I thought everyone despised me.”

"Things start to creep up again. As soon as I stood outside the door, I was crippled by paranoid thoughts and this fear of other people."

Jonny Benjamin

He is such an articulate and thoughtful young man, it’s hard to believe that he could become overwhelmed by such delusions. But that is the horrid power of schizophrenia.
It all came to a head one Thursday morning in the offices of the charity Rethink Mental Illness. It is one of the Telegraph Christmas Charities and had helped him enormously in his Find Mike campaign. He has now worked there for a number of years as an ambassador.

Jonny Benjamin and Neil Laybourn, on the day they were reunited, January 2014

He did not know at the time, but a side effect of one of the antipsychotic drugs he was taking, was akathisia: an intense restlessness. “It was horrible and exhausting. I had days and days pacing up and down and no sleep. I just had a breakdown.”
“I thought: I need to hurt myself. I feel suicidal. I was in hysterics, I couldn’t stop crying, but my line manager came in and he calmed me down – he was amazing.”

"I thought: I need to hurt myself. I feel suicidal. I was in hysterics, I couldn’t stop crying."

Jonny Benjamin

If the Find Mike campaign was a wonderful reminder that there is always light, however dark the tunnel may be, this was painful proof that recovery from mental illness can be a long, hard slog.
He spent much of last winter in a variety of different hospitals, including on Christmas Day 2014.
He had told his close-knit family not to visit, and he had purposefully shut himself off from all the jollity and festivities on the television.
But come 7am, as every morning, he got a knock on his hospital room door from a nurse delivering his daily medication. “And I thought, ‘oh, no. It’s Christmas Day and I’m away from my family and I’m stuck in hospital’. And in comes a member of staff, with a gift all wrapped up, saying ‘Happy Christmas’. It was lovely. It changed the whole day.”
Since then he has slowly made a lot of progress. “I am in a lot better place”, thanks to a good psychiatrist, “a better mix of drugs”, and ceaseless vigilance about his mental wellbeing. He now ensures he undertakes regular mindfulness (a form of meditation), as well as courses of cognitive behaviour therapy – exercises which help retrain the way he thinks, dampening down the paranoia, while emphasising the rational.
He admits that one of the possible downsides of the documentary film was that, for a while, “I thought: I’m better, I don’t need this.” He now realises his brain needs just as much exercise and medication as a damaged kidney does.
And that one of his messages, as he goes around giving talks to prisons, hospitals and schools.

Jonny Benjamin giving a talk about mental health at his old school Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley

Last month, for the first time, he returned to his own school: The Jewish Free school in North London, a place that has some dark memories for him. He was as young as 11 when he first started to suffer from delusions, and hearing voices in his head.
“It is strange going back. Since the film, I’ve had so many messages from people whom I was at school with. There was one person who emailed me, saying, ‘All the time we sat next to each other in class, I was self harming and you were going through the same thing. I wish I’d known.’ It’s just heart-breaking.”

But he firmly believes talking about mental health is the first step to removing any stigma, especially among schoolchildren.
“Last week I went to talk to a group of scouts, aged 10 and 11, and I asked them who would go and ask for help -- from a parent or a doctor -- if they had really bad stomach cramps. And everyone put their hand up.
“And then I asked them who would go to talk to someone if they were upset, or really low or anxious. Just three out of the 20 put their hand up.”
“I asked them why and they said they were worried about what people would think.”

Jonny Benjamin in January 2014, when he launched his #FindMike campaign Credit: Heathcliff O'Malley

He adds: “There is a real need for young people to talk. We need to talk about suicide. It is a big killer, of young men in particular.”
Suicide remains the leading cause of death for men between 20 and 34 in England and Wales, representing 24 per cent of all deaths in 2013.

"It was such a magical moment for me. I had always wondered what had happened to that guy on the bridge and thanks to him, I’ve met some amazing people."

Neil Laybourn

He not only works for Rethink Mental Illness, which gives advice and information to those with mental illnesses and their carers. But he also still uses some of its services. “I attend a local Rethink group. Being with people who get you, who share similar thoughts, is really helpful. It’s a lifeline. If these sort of groups didn’t exist, I don’t know what would happen.”
After the media circus died down, Benjamin and Laybourn stayed friends.
Laybourn, who never asked to be thrust into the spotlight, tells me: “It was a little bit of fate. It was such a magical moment for me. I had always wondered what had happened to that guy on the bridge and thanks to him, I’ve met some amazing people. But the most important thing is that Jonny is my mate and he is still on the planet.”
Jonny himself can recall only hazy details about that cold morning on Waterloo Bridge, save one thing he remembers clearly: the stranger kept on telling him “things can get better”.
And they have. Not in a Hollywood way. But then life rarely does follow a simple script.
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