Dr Alex George, the government’s youth mental health ambassador, social media star and author of bestselling self-help guides for adults and children, is reflecting on the measures he’s taken to look after his own wellbeing.

He has weekly therapy, gave up alcohol a year ago, takes medication for ADHD – which was diagnosed 18 months ago, and which explains a lot about his struggles growing up – and is still grieving for his 19-year-old brother, Llŷr, who died by suicide in 2020, just as he was about to start medical school.

“I’ve had to prioritise my own mental health above everything else, to be able to do everything else,” explains the 32-year-old former Love Island star, who hails from Carmarthen, Wales. He has a good team around him and puts his health first, he adds.

“I have therapy, I get support, I prioritise sleep and exercise,” says George, who also hosts the walking and wellness podcast, Stompcast. “But there are ups and downs. I still go through difficult times.

“The anniversaries are hard. Christmas is hard. We sit around the table and, you know, my brother was 10 years younger than me and should be at that Christmas dinner table. It’s very hard to sit there and not feel that pain. I don’t think that ever goes away.”

That terrible event was one of the factors which sparked his determination to help people who are suffering with mental health issues, and in 2021 Boris Johnson appointed George youth ambassador for mental health, helping to shape mental health policy for young people.

His debut book for children, A Better Day, a positive mental health handbook, was a Sunday Times bestseller and went on to win the Children’s Non Fiction Book of the Year 2022.

He has now written the follow-up, A Better Day Journal, comprising fun and calming activities, exercises including mindfulness, visualisation and a range of techniques to deal with anxiety, as well as a mood journal.

“It’s been really hard,” he says. “One of the things I try and tell people is that I’m not sitting here as an author or as an ambassador telling you that I’ve got everything sorted, and do this and your life will be perfect, because in reality life is hard, things happen and we have to learn how to deal with them.

“My brother passed away three years ago now, and I went from yellow/green on the mental health spectrum straight down to that red end, trying to climb up that while doing everything else.

“There are times that I struggled, and what I found is that for me it’s been incredibly helpful actually sharing those experiences, which is why I talk about medication and the highs and lows of mental health medications, why I’ve talked about my experiences with depression and ADHD, because I really want to help other people with those experiences, but it’s really helped me as well because there’s a sense of community.”

His youth ambassador role is voluntary and takes up 80% of his time – he raises enough money doing brand campaigns and business talks to generate an income to pay his staff and give himself a wage. And it’s brought to his attention what he agrees is an epidemic for children’s mental health.

“Recent figures (RCPCH) show there are over 400,000 young people waiting for support with mental health, waiting lists are longer than ever and these are real challenges.

“A lot of people look at the data and ask quite sensibly, ‘Is this because we’re telling people to talk more and people are opening up more – is that contributing to those figures?’ But even taking that into account, we are just seeing much higher prevalence of [mental] illness among groups of young people.

“It’s easy to point the finger at social media, but we live in a hyper-connected digital age yet young people are more disconnected than ever, they are lonelier than ever before. With everything going on in the world at the moment, all of those things are like an information overload for young people.”

Expectations and pressure on young people are significant, as well as the pressures they place upon themselves with comparison culture, he adds.

In the journal, he reveals to his young readers that he was a ‘world-class worrier’, gently encouraging them to write down their thoughts and feelings, offering advice on how they can open up about their anxieties and turn negative feelings into positive ones.

He knows the problems social media can create but he also thinks there are times when it can be really powerful in a good way. “For instance, I’ve found so much support in the ADHD community online, which has probably been more helpful than any kind of professional website or information service that I’ve seen.”

George, who gave up being an A&E doctor two years ago – he couldn’t fit everything in – was initially sad when he got the ADHD diagnosis, because he has lived with it all his life.

“I struggled a lot at school with attention, sensitivity, connecting in relationships with others, the way that you interpret the world, the way that your energy levels work is so different. If I’d have known this stuff, people could have supported me differently, but I could have also done X, Y and Z to change my life.”

The medication helps, but his lifestyle changes have also proved hugely beneficial, he explains.

“The first thing I did was think about what I eat, the role of exercise, the importance of sleep and of routine with ADHD, learning and understanding the psychology of ADHD.

“Stopping alcohol is one of the biggest things. If you drink alcohol with ADHD, you’re looking at someone who is likely to be more impulsive. Within a few months of the diagnosis, I stopped drinking.”

He has a 24-hour rule, where if he is prone to react impulsively to a situation – it might be a purchase or a decision – he’s trained himself to think about it for 24 hours before going through with it.

“The net change of all these things is that I’m calmer, probably kinder to myself and compassionate. I’m certainly a lot healthier, physically and mentally.

“I can’t explain how different my health is from a year ago,” he adds. “I probably have a more positive outlook on the world because I just understand the way that I see it better.”

He lives in London and is single, but doesn’t feel so alone since the ADHD diagnosis.

“Feeling isolated is an awful thing. I’ve always felt very different from others, but not really understood why, whereas now I know there are loads of people that also feel like this.”

Love Island, which he appeared on in 2018, seems like a lifetime ago, he agrees, but he doesn’t regret being on the show.

“It’s part of why I’m doing what I do. You can’t change the past, and you are who you are today because of everything that’s happened.

“I think that to regret is foolish,” says George. “If you were to remove something that has happened in the past, then you will alter your present.”

A Better Day Journal by Dr Alex George is published by Wren & Rook on January 4, priced £8.99.