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Roman talks about dealing with his own mental health issues - and remembers his friend Joe Lyons.

Every day, Roman Kemp is contacted by young people who are struggling. With people turning to him for advice, he’s questioning whether or not there is a worsening mental health crisis and asking if these young people should be offered more support in their own communities.

The documentary Roman Kemp: The Fight For Young Lives - available on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three and ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer from Wednesday 1 November - follows the presenter as he immerses himself in schools, youth centres and treatment settings around the country, as well as meeting experts, charities and visiting the Houses of Parliament to try and understand the potential solutions for improving the mental health of young people in the UK today.

Below, read about how Roman has dealt with his own mental health issues, in our interview from 2021 where he reflects on his earlier documentary and the loss of his friend Joe. 

"I've been on TV shows where I've had a camera in my face 24 hours a day for four weeks and this is still the most personal thing I've ever done.

"This has gone inside my mind and inside the [minds] of a lot of young men around the country."

Radio and TV presenter Roman Kemp has been thinking about making a documentary about male mental health for the past six years.

And it's certainly an important, pressing issue. Suicide rates in England and Wales remain at a 20-year high. In 2019, three-quarters of those who took their own lives in England and Wales - a total of 4,303 - were men. This was the highest figure since 1981.

Tragically, in August last year this issue reached Roman intimately with the death of his close friend and producer Joe Lyons, who was 31.

"The stats are completely out of control," Roman tells ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three. "It's something I've been very much so personally affected by and I believe the time has gone now where you can shy away from it.

"Now that stigma has to go."

If you or someone you know has been affected by issues raised in this story, sources of support are available at the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Action Line. For example, you can call Samaritans free on 116 123, email them at jo@samaritans.org, or visit to find your nearest branch.

Roman first met Joe, a broadcast producer, seven years ago on a work gig. They clicked straight away, becoming close colleagues and even closer friends.

"Joe was my absolute best mate," Roman, 27, says. "We were together every day. We were always a pair.

"It was just constant laughing. He was just the kindest person I knew.

"I owe him everything. And I really mean that."

After his friend's death, Roman decided to investigate why so many young men are taking their own lives across the UK - and why young men are not talking about what they're going through.

In his ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three documentary Roman travels across the country speaking to men who've made suicide attempts, mates of people who've taken their own lives and mental health experts about what can be done to help.

Roman says: "I remember just saying, 'that's it I can't sit and have the platform that I have and not do anything.'

"I wanted to show the confusion [and] the anger. Because that's the reality, the reality is the people that you leave behind.

"I used this film as my own therapy. I can't even remember it. I just remember crying a lot. It was really hard. It's still hard now."

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Roman says he'd previously been warned not to talk too openly about mental health issues, including his own, in case it might affect his career.

"I called up my team and I was just like, 'now I have to talk about it.'

"To be totally honest with you I'd had chats with my team that had said to me, 'don't open up that much, you're a young guy, are you sure you want to get into it yet?'

"If there's young guys out there that see me talking about my own mental health and it somehow helps them then I've won."

In the documentary, Roman discusses his own history with depression and the medication he takes to help manage it.

"These are thoughts that I've been dealing with in my own head since I was around 15," he says.

"I guess when I'm in that place where I haven't taken my meds there's a part of me that just [thinks] there's no way out.

"It's like there's five doors in front of you and all of them have cement behind them. You feel trapped.

"You've got no perspective of a way out and it's a horrible place to be."

Roman has taken sertraline, a type of antidepressant medication, for 12 years.

"I've always regulated it pretty well with taking tablets and antidepressants," he says.

Roman also speaks to his parents - musicians Martin Kemp and Shirlie Holliman - in the documentary about his mental health issues.

"I've always been of the idea that my dad's never fully understood what it is that I go through in my head," Roman says.

"And that's hard because he's my best mate and he knows everything about me.

"And yeah, it was a big conversation, it was one that I realised I'd never had with him until I did this [documentary].

"I'd never spoken to them about the depths of it. It was a nice moment."

In the film, Roman explores how mental health problems can be related to ideas about masculinity - although the causes of suicide are always complex and never related to one single issue.

"No matter what, there is still an idea that the man is the breadwinner of the family," he says. "The man is the person that has to have a family, has to find the perfect person and be happy with them, have kids and help them financially.

"And sometimes that pressure for guys is too much."

And the pandemic - and the financial toll that's come with it - has an impact too, according to Roman.

"The pandemic has just accelerated everything," he says. "It's accelerated people's depression, anxiety, fears. We're living in a world now where it's literally like 'fear porn' - how can the world be scared next?

"And for someone who is already going through something mentally, when you start hearing about job losses, people not even being able to put food on the plate for their family, that's a serious thing that - especially [for] guys - is a tough, tough thing to take.

"Guys suffer hugely with thinking they're not where they should be in their life and to tell someone that you have to pause your life for over a year, sit in your house and deal with your own thoughts and not make any money is an extremely dangerous thing to do."

Roman visited organisations across the UK that are trying to help young men struggling with mental ill health, like an emergency street triage team in Nottingham who dispatch mental health workers to people in crisis and a charity called Lighthouse, in Belfast, that helps boys and young men who've been affected by suicide.

"You've got light at the end of the tunnel in terms of groups and charities starting to make this movement happen," he says.

But Roman also believes the government needs to take mental health issues more seriously.

"Not enough is being done," he says. "To not have the support in place for kids, in my opinion, is disgraceful. There's not enough budget there. There's not enough onus put on it.

"The government will jump on it when it's a mental health week but other than that [they] don't want to know about it and it's not that important."

In a statement the Minister for Mental Health at the time, Nadine Dorries, said: "I am absolutely committed to supporting good mental health and wellbeing for all and commend Roman for coming forward to talk about his experiences.

"It is often very challenging for men to talk about their experiences and seek support. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness - I encourage anyone to speak to people they trust, their GP or self-refer through the NHS."

The minister adds that the government has provided an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 for mental health services - along with £500 million announced in the recent Spending Review and £79 million to boost mental health support for children and young people.

"It's important to recognise recent investment," says Lucy Schonegevel, Associate Director for Policy and Practice for the charity Rethink Mental Illness, "but there are challenges in translating this from policy into practice quickly enough, particularly in the midst of the pandemic.

"The support people need extends beyond traditional mental health services and includes a compassionate welfare system, adequate social care and a connection to the communities we live, work, and volunteer in. This is where Government must focus future funding."

Roman also travelled to the University of Glasgow to speak to one of the UK's leading experts in suicide prevention, Professor Rory O'Connor, who's been doing research into suicide for 25 years.

"One of the things we know for certain about suicide is that it's never caused by a single factor," Professor O'Connor says in the film.

"So if we're trying to understand the fact that three-quarters of all suicides in the UK are by men then we need to understand there are a whole range of factors - something's impacting on your sense of masculinity or it could be social inequality. And men are less likely to seek help and that all comes together into this sense of entrapment [where] suicidal thoughts are more likely."

Professor O'Connor talks through some of the things that can help people at risk of suicide, such as a in which people are asked to think about what makes them suicidal, to think about things than can distract them and to identify people they can call in a moment of crisis.

"They're really simple, straight-forward interventions because suicide is preventable and it's preventable right up until the very last moment," he explains.

Roman says he learnt a lot from making the documentary - and that ultimately he just wanted to make sure he did what was right by his pal Joe.

"I learnt so much, I was so grateful," he says.

"The anger [of losing Joe] now is gone. The confusion will always be there, the sadness will always be there.

"This is so personal. I just want to do my friend justice, that's it."

Roman Kemp: The Fight For Young Lives is available on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Three and ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ iPlayer from Wednesday 1 November.

If you've been affected by issues raised in this story, sources of support are available via the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Action Line here.

Originally published Tuesday 16 March 2021.