Suffolk Woman in Finals for National Business Award; Tina Gibbons from Great Barton has reached the final for the East of England Businesswoman of the year.

It wasn’t a promising start.

Tina Gibbons from Great Barton has set up an online resource called The Mind Sanctuary.; Tina with her website

Tina Gibbons, who runs a website offering information on mental health and wellbeing, was waiting for me at a cafe in Stowmarket where we had arranged to meet.

The only trouble was, the cafe was closed.

“Don’t worry,” said Tina. “They say we can stay anyway.”

So stay we did. The owner treated us to a pot of tea and a huge wedge of coffee cake while we sat in the sunshine of his walled garden. And what’s more, he refused to accept any payment.

Tina Gibbons from Great Barton has set up an online resource called The Mind Sanctuary.; Tina in her relaxing garden.

It was a random act of kindness that couldn’t have been more uplifting and appropriate.

October is Suffolk Health and Wellbeing Month, which aims to focus on the importance of good health and mental wellbeing through a series of events, activities and campaigns involving more than 35 organisations and individuals across the county.

The month is being co-ordinated by Suffolk County Council, Suffolk Mental Health Partnership Trust and The Mind Sanctuary, a website set up by Tina last year with the aim of offering people “information, inspiration and hope”.

As part of the month and to coincide with World Mental Health Day on Monday October 10, the sanctuary has teamed up with local businesswomen Helen Oldfield and Rachel Ducker to spearhead a campaign to show Suffolk as the kindest county.

People are being invited to pledge to act selflessly, without anything being expected in return, by committing random acts of kindness, be it smiling at passers-by, contacting an old friend or inviting someone who is lonely for a drink or a meal.

After our experience at Harlequin House Tearoom, I could definitely vouch for the effects of being on the receiving end of a random act of kindness. The world seemed an altogether warmer place. And the cafe owner seemed like a happy, contented sort of chap so it was fairly safe to assume giving without expectation is good for the giver too.

But the evidence is more than anecdotal.

Brain science shows that the act of giving stimulates the reward areas of the brain generating positive feelings. It is now recognised as one of the five evidence-based steps to wellbeing promoted by the NHS.

Starting the Mind Sancutary was the culmination of a personal journey for Tina Gibbons.

After being diagnosed with “potential” bipolar disorder when she was in her 20s she took medication for around three years. Advised that she was “too ill” to come off the medication without relapsing but “not ill enough” to warrant additional support, she desperately needed a place where she could find out what other therapies and treatment options were available.

After paying for therapy, she successfully came off medication and now uses a combination of natural approaches such as yoga, diet, mindfulness and lifestyle choices, to manage her own mental health.

She set up the sanctuary to offer the kind of information and support to others that she herself would have liked when she was ill and during her own recovery.

“I never received a definitive diagnosis for my own illness and I never sought one,” says Tina. “It was not the route I felt would work for me.”

Looking back, Tina can see that her own mental ill health really began in her late teens and early 20s, when she experienced depression.

“There were lots of things I was unhappy with in my life,” she says.

Then a period of massive upheaval heralded a serious crisis in her life.

“Within space of a year I moved from Norwich to Edinburgh, gave up my job and went to university as a mature student,” she says. “I moved with my then boyfriend but when we got to Edinburgh I ended our five-year relationship and began sharing a flat with several other girls from lots of different countries.”

Tina was studying anthropology and economics and soon found that this led her to question previously-held beliefs.

“It shook the foundations of everything I held to be true,” she says.

Things soon began to spiral out of control and Tina’s patterns of thinking became alarming.

“I imagined that my friends were influencing my thoughts telephathically,” she says. “I believed if I thought something it would happen. I felt at one stage if I did not come home to Suffolk my mum or dad would die and that it would be my fault.”

Tina was in touch enough with reality to be alarmed by what was happenening to her and she returned to Suffolk, where her doctor prescribed Prozac.

After another incident at her parents’ home, where she ended up calling an ambulance because her mind was in overdrive, she was prescribed medication to treat bipolar disorder.

Her condition stabilised, she gave up her studies, moved back to Suffolk and returned to working in finance, as she had previously.

Although she was better, Tina was still not happy.

“I had this intense dissatisfaction with who I was and where I was going with my life,” she says. “That wasn’t something medication could get rid of so I sought to come off medication, with appropriate support, get talking therapies and move my life forward. That was a massive turning point for the better. Talking therapies gave me an invaluable insight into my thought processes. I looked at my past and under the guidance of my therapist set about changing my life.”

Tina went travelling and ended up doing scuba diving training in Thailand, where she was to spend the next year.

When she returned to England she had life coaching to help her find a direction that was right for her. She eventually decided she would like to write about mental health and use her own experiences to help others.

“I wanted to offer some inspriation for people who were in a place that I used to be,” she says.

She set up a business publishing a new magazine in Bury St Edmunds, the Moreton Hall Directory, and sold it three years later as a going concern before returning to Thailand for another two years.

“Over those two years I spent a lot of time researching online,” she says. “I eventually came up with the concept of the Mind Sanctuary. It was something I really wanted to do and brings all my professional and personal experience together.”

The website features a blog from Tina, sections addressing common problems as well as a host of other information on different therapies and appraoches that may help others. There’s also a free guide to understanding and managing stress.

“I am now able to manage my mental health without medication,” says Tina. “Over time I have developed a lifestyle that suits me as an individual. It is not a utopian, Zen-like state. We all have a spectrum of mental health, with good health at one end and ill health at the other and we move along that spectrum at various stages of our lives. We are all touched by mental health and mental ill-health. Even if you haven’t experienced mental ill-health yourself then someone you know almost certainly has.”

Tina received some funding through enterprise agency Menta to set up the directory element of the sanctuary, which went live earlier this year.

Just a few months later she was shortlisted as a finalist in the start-up category of the East of England Businesswomen of the Year Awards and approached by Suffolk County Council and Suffolk Mental Health Partnership to ask if the Mind Sanctuary would act as online host for Suffolk Health and Wellbeing Month.

“I have been blown away by offers of voluntary support from so many other professionals and just last month I was offered a place at the Suffolk School for Social Entrepreneurs, based at the Eastern Enterprise Hub in Ipswich,” says Tina. “The volume of support for the concept and what I have achieved and delivered so far has been amazing and beyond what I even imagined only one year ago.”

For more information visit www.themindsanctuary.com