The chief feature of mental illness, whatever the diagnosis, is isolation; the person is cast into a world of their own – good or bad, happy or sad - to which other people cannot connect.   The chief purpose of Mental Fight Club is to celebrate and explore connectedness within and between ourselves and the wider world.

Mental Fight Club emerged informally from a private party in the crypt of St George the Martyr Church on Borough High Street. The party marked the emergence of MFC Founder, Thomas Tobias, nee Sarah Wheeler, from a particularly intense and suicidal bout of depersonalization disorder.   

This first party was held to celebrate all those people who had helped him through. The party included a performance of Time To Be Real by Thomas Tobias, four of his closest friends and his father.  Recorded music was interleaved between each verse.

  
Time To Be Real is the first section of Ben Okri’s Mental Fight.  People seemed to like both the poem and the way we chose to perform it and wanted to hear more. 

Thus Mental Fight Club was born and the next seven sections were similarly devised with music and latterly visuals.  (Click here to find out more about the founding meetings),  When we got to the end of the poem, eight meetings later, people wanted Mental Fight Club to continue. 

So we set ourselves up as a formal group with constitution, committee and bank account and marked our official launch with a photographic exhibition – To The Lighthouse (And Back) and a big, new son et lumiere performance of Time To Be Real on 23rdApril 2005 – St George’s Day!