About Resilience

For Level 3 Business Studies, in conjunction with the Young Enterprise Scheme, we were assigned to start a business. A teacher suggested to us that we could get in touch with celebrities and get them to talk about depression and mental illness and maybe compile a book. As we thought about it, it really made sense. As a teenage male at college, you are supposed to be seen as a tough and strong person. If you have depression you are seen as weak and not “manly”. The more we thought about it, we realised that we really needed to do something about it, and give those that do struggle with depression, at our age, hope, and a path to recovery. 

 

Our vision is to help provide New Zealanders with good knowledge and understanding of mental illness with the help of other inspirational Kiwi's, so they are able to cope with how they feel and become healthier and happier appropriately. We feel there is not enough information or awareness out there, as well as thousands of misconceptions about mental illness in New Zealand. It is seen as this mysterious and scary topic that no one wants to talk about. The stigma needs to stop. 

 

We called our social enterprise, Resilience. We are a non-profit. We decided that we wanted to compile a book, targeting teenage males, filled with stories from males, about their experiences with depression and mental illness. We started networking with people and found a mentor, Andrew Morrison, who works for the Mental Health Foundation. We started compiling stories from numerous males, including John Key, Taika Waititi (Movie Director), Billy Graham and Simon Phillips (founder of Fitwear). We have compiled a resource filled with 12 stories, all that have been affected by mental illness and depression in some way. We are going to be donating them to schools around New Zealand. Overcome; A Resource By Resilience, is the book we compiled. This website is the continuation of our initiative.

 

Obviously printing books costs money, so we decided to take it online, and now instead of targeting just teenage males, why not target everyone? We believe we have found niche where people who have been affected by mental illness, want to use their story to help, by giving advice to others going through something similar. We have stories with all different types of experiences and perspectives on mental illness, and hope that they will really resonate with everyone. 

​

We hope this website will spread awareness and information about mental illness that is useful for New Zealanders. As well as help those battling with mental illness to realise they are not alone, and though taking that first step and reaching out for help is scary and daunting, it is so essential for recovery. We also hope this website will help spread awareness about mental illness to those that are lucky enough to not go through it. This should give them a better understanding and outlook on mental illness overall, and hopefully make them a lot more accepting of mental illness in our society.