Swimming 25km in the name of mental health: Edwin Ivanescu knows what it means to go the distance.
Mental health is a more prominent issue today than it has ever been: more than half of students surveyed in a 2022 study reported issues with their mental health. Yet, one side of the conversation may be being neglected. Slogans like “you are not alone” are ubiquitous in today’s culture, aiming to encourage people to reach out for support with their mental health- but there is very little guidance on what to do or say when someone reaches out to you. It is somewhat assumed that people will just know what to do. Part of encouraging people to seek support from friends and family must be educating those same friends and family on how they can best support their loved ones.
Aiming to bridge that education gap is Edwin Ivanescu, a student at the University of Edinburgh, with the mental health charity movement Go The Distance. In Edwin’s words, Go The Distance exists for two purposes: “offering support and information for those friends who genuinely want to help and show up but do not know how, and to reassure those struggling mentally that their friends and loved ones genuinely want to be there for them.”
Under the banner of ‘going the distance,’ individuals, or “ambassadors,” can demonstrate their support for loved ones by literally going the distance, through athletic means such as running or cycling. You don’t have to be an athlete to take part – anyone is encouraged to join in.
Go The Distance’s social media gives advice on how to support loved ones, broken down into comprehensive guides, such as “How to show up for someone.” The caption of this post sheds a little light on Edwin’s motivation for starting the charity movement: “Most of us want to show up for someone we love when they are struggling. However, we never get told how to.”
Go The Distance began one night with a question. A friend of Edwin’s, who had been struggling with their mental health, reached out to him asking for help. Edwin and another friend were fortunate enough to know the kind of things they could say; Edwin takes part in competitive swimming, where mental health is an oft discussed topic due to the high-pressure conditions competitive sport can create. His friend was a medicine student, who had been taught how to offer support in a situation like this. Edwin felt lucky to be able to help his friend that night. Yet, afterwards, there was something nagging at him: what about the people who don’t know what to say?
Edwin recently went the distance himself, swimming 25km – the equivalent of two and a half swim marathons, or 4,000 lengths – alongside three friends, for 100km swam in total. An experience he described as “brutal” but “rewarding.” In doing so, they were able to raise over £1,300 for the mental health charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). It was a tough experience both mentally and physically, fighting boredom as he swam for over six hours – not counting breaks for recovery and nutrition. He emphasised that the support of his friends and girlfriend poolside was vital in helping power through.
Edwin hopes to expand Go The Distance in the future, either by becoming a registered charity, or by partnering with an established mental health charity like CALM. He plans to organise more challenge-based events specifically for those who aren’t competitive endurance athletes, such as competitions on who can swim the most lengths or run the most laps of a track in a set time frame. Edwin can only register Go The Distance as a charity once they have raised £5,000 – a goal Edwin hopes to quickly reach, with £1,500 now raised in total.
When Edwin recounted his almost Herculean feat to me, I was astounded at his commitment. That night, spent tirelessly helping someone who needed it, had led to four friends swimming the equivalent of more than three trips across the English Channel. It seemed to me that, in Edwin’s mind, this swim had been gruelling, but important. In that way, it seemed to resemble the process of reaching out and offering support to friends – going the distance for the ones you love.
Image by Edwin Ivanescu, provided for press use.