We sat down with Milo, a 24-year-old creative who talks about his journey so far and how he maintains a good mental state as a freelancer. 

"My names Milo, Im 24 years old and I'm a freelance artist, musician and model. So for me, the first time I noticed it was straight out of school. I think a lot of people knew what they wanted to do or were going straight to University. I took a gap foundation year and moved to Brighton. I had a foundation but maybe got in with the wrong crowd and started doing a lot of drugs, smoking a lot of weed and not really attending university. And I think a lot of things happened at once, like I split up with my girlfriend at the time, I wasn’t getting any good feedback from any of the universities I wanted to go to, and that’s when I went to the doctors and said I was feeling pretty depressed and didn’t know what was up, and he said “you’re bipolar”. I think that is the first step is to speak to someone about it. The doctor said it’s not a big deal, it’s just when you’re high, you’re really high and when you’re low, you’re really low.

Everyone has their own ways of dealing with this. For me, exercise and seeing people are the two things that get me out of a hole or feeling low. I think it’s easy to get trapped inside your own head, especially as a freelance person or someone who does different things every day. I can have days where I’m thinking, I literally have nothing on today and everyone else is at work so what should I do as I don’t want to just sit at home. So on days like this, I firstly get exercise done. So if I get bored of the gym, I change it up and go for a run, go to yoga, go bouldering and I’ve recently joined a five a side football team.

If you are feeling down, talk to someone about it, don’t hide it. I know it’s such a cliche thing to say but it is true. Talk to your family about it or whoever you feel comfortable talking to. People will always want to listen and help if they can."

Thank you for reading and hope this helps.