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Even towards the end, when his flame was burning out, we managed to salvage deep moments of love and humour. If you have experiences with this, you may find some of the content upsetting. Most importantly, Jonny was simply the best dad ever. He cherished all three of our boys and instilled in them a love of life, a sense of humour, and a passion for stories and for football of course.
He reached out to everyone he met in schools and libraries, in our community of friends, neighbours, and authors… even the guys in the local corner shop. Thankfully the boys and I will always hold big buckets of his magic inside us. Living with his illness was hard for all of us…I felt I just needed to carry on. Jonny suffered with episodes of depression and anxiety throughout his adult life, especially when he worried about his writing work. But in the last two years of his life this all started to grow increasingly out of control.
Jonny was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes and one of his books was rejected by a publisher. He took this badly and his vision of his world narrowed in on itself.
Jonny became increasingly low and agitated and less present for us. Despite all the love and comfort that surrounded him, he was unreachable. Living with his illness was hard for all of us. I was working full time as a clinical psychologist and then coming home and needing to keep it together and be strong for Jonny and our three boys.
I felt I just needed to carry on. I felt exhausted and frustrated. Dinner times were the hardest.
We did talk to the boys about dad being ill; that he was feeling depressed and anxious and needed our support. The turning point was when we had to cancel our summer holiday because Jonny was too ill. In fact spending the summer at home together was really peaceful and the boys were fantastic, reassuring and kind to Jonny, despite being disappointed about missing a trip abroad. During his depression he became a very private person. One day that year I came home from work to paramedics. Jonny had taken an excessive amount of his medication and my son had called the ambulance after dad was acting strange.
Jonny said it was an accident and I believed him. The club have been very supportive of the Striker Boy campaign; we were honoured that the head of Arsenal in the Community, Alan Sefton MBE, attended a memorial event for Jonny, where he met his three sons. With an estimated 3. And whilst we welcome the changes that are attracting more women to the game, it is still a predominantly male audience.
With such a large captive audience, football has, not just an opportunity, but an obligation to promote mental health awareness and stamp out discrimination. Historically, the terraces have been a place where stigmas were reinforced not broken down. I remember going to games as a child and regularly hearing homophobic and sexist chants. However, things have come a long way and football, in the UK, is now a major platform for positive social change.
Striker Boy. Can year-old Nat Dixon save the club he loves from relegation? Striker Boy is a page-turning football thriller, with plenty of action both on and off. Striker Boy [Jonny Zucker] on bahana-line.com *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Nat has grown up travelling around the world with his Dad. He's played.
The stance that the footballing establishments take on mental health is incredibly important in changing the public's perceptions. This includes everyone from the board of the FA to the pundits on Match of the Day.
Through the Striker Boy campaign we have worked with dozens of football clubs including Arsenal, Manchester City, and Chelsea. Every club we have spoken to has told us that promoting mental health awareness is a huge priority for them. We always had two clear aims.
Jonny was a Mind service user, and sadly he experienced first-hand that demand for services is often outstretching supply. Jonny was a much-loved figure in the community and his death had a profound impact on everyone who knew him.
At his funeral, a seemingly endless line of mourners snaked through the cemetery. And within days of his death, we decided we wanted to do something to honour is memory. That is why together with his family and the mental health charity Mind, we have re-published a special not-for-profit edition of his popular novel Striker Boy. We chose Striker Boy for the simple reason that it was the best. It was the best because it has that cross-generational appeal that makes it genuinely enjoyable for children and adults alike.
It was the best because the plot is fast-paced and intense but also has sincere emotional depth. So it was an easy choice really.
When we first started the the campaign our aims really were quite simple, and also separate. However, quite quickly the campaign became more than that. It started when we developed free emotional resilience resources to accompany the book, which then branched out into running emotional resilience sessions in schools and football clubs.
At a recent emotional resilience session we ran at Swansea football club, a year-old boy came up to me at the end and said: So now as well as raising money for Mind we are actively involved in promoting mental health awareness and emotional resilience in children. Everyone working on the campaign knew Jonny.