Newcastle teenager Kai Leighton tells his story of mental health issues that led him to setting up The Mental Shift - an organisation that uses Muay Thai to improve the mental health of young men. Daniel Wales reports.
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00:00 At this gym in the West End of Newcastle, 19-year-old Kyle Layton is using Muay Thai
00:06 to help improve the lives of young men in the city. He first spoke about his own experiences.
00:11 Yeah, essentially I struggled with my mental health quite badly in secondary school. I
00:16 put on a lot of weight. But at the time as well I also had my own initiative called Be
00:21 Heard Young Voice, very similar to the mental shakers, wanting to provide support to young
00:26 people and give them a voice. So I went to Craig, who owns this gym, and I was like,
00:31 I want to do something that incorporates physical activity with mental health. How do we do
00:36 it? And thankfully, his idea was he would train me for free, leading up to my first
00:44 fight, which was a year at the time. And we would document the progress and show people
00:50 the benefits of physical activity on mental health. For me, it was being able to look
00:54 back and go, I've done this, I've been through all of that, but yeah, I've made it out the
00:59 other side. Kyle then spoke of how his organisation, The Mental Shift, operates and how proud he
01:05 is of his achievements. So The Mental Shift at the moment, our main aim is to provide
01:10 support and education to young men around mental health and social behaviour. We're
01:14 also starting to do work for the parents of neurodiverse young people. We use Muay Thai
01:20 as the main method of delivery. And it went from two years ago, just me winging it, figuring
01:31 out how to do it. And then now we've got a board of four people, three young people who
01:37 have lived experience. Seven months ago, I actually sat down and I looked back and I
01:41 was like, I've done this. From a little 17 year old kid to all this time later, being
01:49 able to help other people in that situation. Yeah, it makes me massively proud. Kyle's
01:55 friend Michael, who is also part of the team, talked honestly about beginning his own journey
01:59 with Muay Thai and advocated for others to take part in physical activity. I got involved
02:05 with The Mental Shift around a year and a half ago. I was in my own fight promotion
02:08 business called Evolve Productions. And Kyle came to one of my events and we met there
02:15 and since then we've ended up having a chat, having conversations. The first time I walked
02:22 into a gym, I was nervous. My dad dropped me off and I walked in, oh, she pushed me
02:26 on my own. I'd never really done any martial arts or any fighting before. I wasn't big
02:30 on watching the UFC. I just walked in and the hardest thing about training is in the
02:36 gym. Once you get out, you meet friends. You meet friends for life. There's people I met
02:41 five years ago who I talk to every day and they became part of my family. So I would
02:45 just say take the plunge. It doesn't have to be martial arts. I recommend Muay Thai
02:50 because I think it's amazing. But any sort of physical activity, football, basketball,
02:55 ballet, just do something for yourself. It works for one of us.
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