The Charlie Waller Memorial Trustwas formed to promote mental well-being and to fight the stigma associated with mental health. The Trust focuses particularly on young people, ensuring that they are equipped to look after their mental well-being and offering training and talks to teachers and students. Jeremy Thomas strongly supports the work of CWMT and would recommend a visit to the website:
An excerpt from the CWMT website:
To the outside world Charlie Waller had everything to live for, a successful career, good friends and a loving family. In September 1997 Charlie committed suicide at the age of 28. He was suffering from depression and no longer had the strength to cope with life. Shortly after this tragic event his family founded The Charlie Waller Memorial Trust.
The aim of the Trust is to increase awareness of the signs and the dangers of depression amongst young people and to encourage those who may be depressed to seek help. It also encourages those that are well to pick up the symptoms in others and persuade them to get help.
Five hundred people attended Charlie Waller’s funeral. He was neither old, nor a local stalwart such as a publican; he was not a young victim whose senseless murder provoked commentators to talk of “a community in shock”. Nor was he a figure of renown, whose obsequies the great and good felt bound to attend. Charlie Waller was simply a 28 year-old advertising executive from Fulham, unknown beyond his contemporaries. His death had an impact which continues to affect those who knew him.
Since Charlie’s death in 1997, his parents, family and friends have worked through the Trust to increase awareness of the symptoms and dangers of depression and remove the stigma that is attached to mental illness.