Kayden Cantlow's family and support services talk about mental health

He is not ashamed to tell a journalist, and why should he be?

“I speak to someone every week, it helps me out a hell of a lot,” he said.

“I go in feeling like I’m carrying a ten tonne weight and I come out feeling as light as a feather – if only for a while.

“Just having a chat with a stranger gives you that feeling.”

Vinny’s son Kayden, 14, was a quiet lad, who liked to keep himself to himself and didn’t display any outward sign of emotional turmoil.

But in July, days after the anniversary of his mother’s death from cancer, Kayden took his own life.

For many men, especially younger men and boys, opening up feels like an impossibility.

Vinny, from Colchester, said: “Kayden didn’t really speak out about himself as such. He was always much more worried and concerned for others – just like his mum. There was nothing, no signs.”

Such is the newfound provenance of the conversation around mental health and the importance of speaking out, it almost seems like a cliché to repeat the mantra that communicating is the key to emotional relief.

Yet this remains the simple message which we still struggle to translate into action.

Sitting down at the headquarters of the Youth Enquiry Service (YES), in Colchester town centre, I try to grapple with the scale of the problem.

YES takes the time to address the myriad of issues young people face when in crisis, from rifts within families, to teenage pregnancy and financial woes.

It offers counselling and works closely with housing providers to ensure clients at risk of homelessness get the help they need.

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Its chief executive Jane Blomeley tells me: “We’re tasked with our counselling to see 200 young people per year - we probably see between 300 to350.

“With our homelessness prevention we’re tasked to see between 100 and 120 - we normally see just over 300.”

Maria Hales, counselling co-ordinator, says: “We deal with difficult situations and crises all the time, and they might not turn up with depression as the presenting issue but once they start opening up to someone it becomes clear they’ve had these thoughts.

Sadly it is the case some kids are unable to express that feeling and young men are particularly vulnerable to that.”

Jane says reaching out to young men in particular has always been a focus, with the charity taking time to visit schools to talk about the help available.

She tells me a story of a young boy who received counselling at YES a few years ago, and the story strikes a familiar chord.

“He had been referred here for counselling because he was kicking off at school, misbehaving,” she recounts.

“He came in here and he just cried – and the reason he cried is because his mum had died of cancer the year before and his grandma had died just before her.

“He was living in a house with his dad and older brothers and they were all being strong, but no-one was talking about it.

He was struggling with his grief, his feelings and he was translating that into violence and bullying.

"When he came into counselling he just wanted to find someone to listen to him and find a safe space where he didn’t need to be this tough guy he was supposed to be at home and at school.

“I think there’s this real thing about young men and boys putting up a front, when it is OK to feel rubbish, it is OK to grieve, it is OK to feel sad.

“But they get laughed at for it, so how do you handle that?”

Vinny tells me Kayden didn’t appear to have any particular problems at school, but that he had been teased about his mother’s death a year ago.

With the population of Colchester skyrocketing, services like YES will be needed more than ever, but Jane says such charities are crumbling amid austerity.

“We were started in 1998 by a group of local people who were worried about children and young people in the area falling

through the net of the statutory services,” she said.

“And here we are 32 years later, with those same young people’s children falling through the net of the statutory services.

In the last eight years, austerity cuts have bitten fiercely into children and young people’s services.

“We’ve lost probably about 60 per cent of our funding or more over the past eight or nine years.”

During lockdown, YES offered a telephone service and found it was often the parents who were now struggling, “out of their depth” supporting children with mental health issues.

Jane said: “Quite often parents will phone in during the referral process and say ‘I don’t know who to turn to’.

“It’s a really common thing to have someone say ‘I’m such a bad parent, I’m failing miserably’, and we just talk to them and say ‘Do you know what, everyone struggles.’

“Having that reassuring conversation is a really common part of working here.

“Life isn’t easy and we’ve all struggled, it doesn’t make you a terrible person or a terrible parent. It just makes you human.”

Vinny and his family are campaigning to see safety measures installed at the railway overpass where Kayden took his own life.

But Vinny has another request. He wants to see a couple of benches installed near the overpass.

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If they are put in place, he vows to sit there for three hours per week, talking to strangers about their problems.

“I will advertise where I am and encourage people to just come and talk to a complete stranger,” he said.

You don’t know how much good it can do until you try it.

“Especially with young kids, it seems to be a struggle with peer pressure and a feeling of ‘I can’t talk to someone, I’ll be insulted.’

“You can say what you want to a stranger, they have no prior conception of what you are or who you are.”

• The Gazette is supporting the family’s campaign. Sign the petition at change.org, searching for Francis Cantlow. On social media, use #KaydensWorld.