How a family tragedy inspired a mental health movement, Luke Ambler, ANDYSMANCLUB founder

Luke Ambler is the founder of the men’s suicide prevention charity ANDYSMANCLUB. They offer free-to-attend, peer-to-peer support groups across the United Kingdom and online, with the aim of ending the stigma surrounding men’s mental health.

For PathFinders, we spoke to Luke about the family tragedy that spurred him into action to set up Andy’s Man Club. From an idea borne out of grief, the club now has over 120 free support groups across the country, serving almost 3,000 men a week through 900+ volunteers.

Has mental health always been important to you?

My own personal journey with mental health started way before ANDYSMANCLUB. It started when my eight years old. Without going into a sob story, my parents separated, quite a normal thing to do for a lot of people. But my way of dealing with it was comfort eating and I put on a lot of weight and got big, had a bit of a hard time at school for it. I found rugby which was my crutch, a place where I could go and express myself.

Being a big kid in rugby helps. Mom ends up having a car crash which led to some brain damage, and she developed a mental illness, non-epileptic attack disorder which basically means mum will drop, she’ll fall, you name it, she’s done it.

They moved my mum to where she lives now in a little disabled bungalow., because otherwise she could fall down the stairs and die.

And a result of her illness she developed quite poor mental health, so she developed anxiety where she won’t leave her house for four years at one point just won’t leave on leave for the fear of people judging her having these falls, because it was so stigmatised then, even more so than it is now. That was difficult and the bouts of depression out of that. It was hard to manage and learn and understand it. As a young man, I probably didn’t understand or maybe didn’t believe it.

How did you come to found ANDYSMANCLUB?

On 5th April 2016, my brother-in-law, my partner’s little brother, died by suicide and it came completely out of the blue. Just to give you a backstory, we were out on the Sunday laughing and joking, talking about buying a house. He’d just got promoted at work or they were looking at a promotion at work, everything was going well in his life from what he’d had in the past, he’d completely changed his life around.

On the Sunday morning, he gets up to play football and then he goes to the Palladium with my wife, his daughter and the kids.

And then that night I meet him as I usually would, all of us around my mother in laws for Sunday dinner and then next morning he gets up, goes to work and then doesn’t come home that night. Next morning my mother-in-law gets a knock on the door by a policeman, to say that they’d found her son dead. I’m about to go to a rugby camp with my little boy Alfie, who was so tight with his uncle Andy.

My phone rang, it was my mother-in-law. I said hello and she just said, our Andrew’s dead. And I said, I’m on my way. I dropped Alfie off and shot up to the house. And I remember like it was yesterday, the atmosphere you could have cut with a knife.

Later I had to tell Alfie that his uncle Andy had gone up to heaven, and to hear the scream let out by a six-year-old boy will live with me forever. It absolutely crippled me and was the catalyst for this movement. No family should have to go through what this family’s going through.

Well, how do you do that? Well you have to stop the man killing himself. How do you do that? Get guys to do the one thing that they struggle to do, which is talk.

So I came up with this straightforward idea. And at the time where my business was, I worked alongside a youth charity. They gave me access to this room and I thought well throw some chairs in there and it was connected to a sports hall. So, I would just play basketball or rugby. And then if we get a chance and we’re stretching out after we might say ‘how are you doing?’ And sit and chat. And got there the first night, my brother, my cousin came to support Alena had come and Andy’s mum who was involved in establishing this and we just sat there and then, you know, five other guys came through doors.

There was a guy called Terry and I had this sponge ball in my hand and I was a bit nervous about how it was going to go. But he just went right, give me that ball here so I just chucked it to him, and he just offloaded his story. And then that next week 15 men came and I thought, we’re on to something here.

What is the overall aim of the charity, and how are you working with organisations like Morson to promote this?

The aim is to really obliterate that suicide number and really give people hope. It’s not about our brand, or our organization. I think for me it’s about getting to a point where people can just talk to their mate about it, and people can just go talk to work about it. They can access the work support, they can access whatever it may be. So someone even Tyson Fury talk about it, he was a big, tough boxer, actually if he struggled with it and he’s admit it, maybe I can get people to do the same.

So that’s the bit that I took inspiration from that people have got role models to look up to and think, well, they’ve done it and so can I. Whether that be associated with ANDYSMANCLUB, it’s okay if not, I’ve never really been precious that’s got to be us. On the first interview I ever did with Sky Sports it literally says, start your own thing, call it what you want.

Obviously what we’re going to continue to do is keep trailblazing forward and opening more groups because we know what we do works and working with people like yourselves, these partnerships are more exciting for me than anything else, because the access that you’ve got to other people and other resources and partners out there and what you’re doing is amazing. Initiatives with us like with the cards and other things. That’s important because those cards are going to go out to a load of businesses that are going to have a lot of employees who are going to be struggling. who’s going to think oh ANDYSMANCLUB, what’s that? They’ll Google it, go to a group and their wife might never know, their employees might never know, but that might be different to them being here and not. So that’s what’s important for us just to continue to grow what we do.

I just want us to continue to grow at a rate that we can sustain, at a rate that doesn’t burn everyone out and just continue to save and change lives. We don’t want that little girl hearing about her dad, or that mum hearing about her son. We just don’t want that, it’s tough at times, but we just want to continue to be a beacon of light for people and just try.

ANDYSMANCLUB has over 120 free support groups nationwide, running every Monday from 7PM except bank holidays. In these groups, men can open up about the storms affecting their lives in a safe, judgement-free and non-clinical environment. Our clubs are designed to be free of pressure, there is no obligation for men to speak, they can simply listen if they wish. Click here to learn more.

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