Event Description

Oxford SU are excited to launch our Sofa Sessions series with our first guest speaker Jonny Benjamin, who will be joining us at Waterstones on Friday 4th May. Come along to hear him chat to Oxford SU President Kate Cole, followed by a Q&A session and a book signing of his brand-new work “The Stranger on the Bridge”.

Jonny Benjamin is an award-winning mental health campaigner, film producer, public speaker, writer and vlogger. At the age of 20 he was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a combination of schizophrenia and bipolar, and later began making films on YouTube about the condition that have been watched by hundreds of thousands of people.

Jonny now speaks publicly about living with mental illness and has written articles and given various interviews on TV, Radio and in print around the world to help educate and break stigma. He has also produced and presented documentaries on BBC Three and Channel 4 on the subjects of mental health and suicide.

His 2014 social media campaign with Rethink Mental Illness to #findMike, the man who talked him out of jumping off a bridge when he was suicidal, went viral and led to Jonny becoming a prominent spokesperson on the subject of suicide. In 2016 Jonny launched ThinkWell, a mental health programme for schools, which has so far been into secondary schools across the UK with huge success. He is currently developing a mental health workshop for primary schools.

Tickets for the event are free, but sign-up is essential