The Mental Health Work That Could Help Save Riders' Lives

The aim of Riders Minds is to be the go-to for equestrians, with help there for all who need it

- Eleanor Jones

IF efforts being made to support riders’ mental health can save even one person’s life, it will be worth everything.

Support service Riders Minds released a film on World Suicide Prevention Day, 10 September, seven months after co-founder Matthew Wright took his own life.

Presented by journalist Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes, the film included an interview with Matthew’s wife Victoria, who set up the service with her husband.

“Whenever anyone’s saying they’re going to take their own life, or it becomes normal living with someone with a mental illness, don’t ever think they’re not going to do it,” Victoria said.

She told Lizzie her husband was a great father to their three children. She said that he might have appeared tough but he was insecure, taking comments to heart, and he had attempted to take his life several times before.

“We’d got help for him and he improved for a couple of years,” she said, adding that before his death, Matthew seemed “probably the happiest he’d ever been”.

“He sent me a message that morning that said, ‘Today is the perfect day.’ I look back now and think, the perfect day for what?”

Matthew had spent time with the children on Valentine’s Day, and cooked dinner. She said he seemed normal if reminiscing about good times, when she put the children to bed.