A DETERMINED young woman has told how an Inverclyde support organisation helped her to overcome a lockdown slump in her mental health and turn her life around.

Lara Graham, 20, lost touch with her close friends during the first lockdown and made contact with the team at Man On! Inverclyde towards the end of 2021.

Thanks to their help, she is now an integral part of the organisation's Young Persons Wellbeing Service which runs on Wednesday nights.

Lara, from Port Glasgow, says the team gave her the confidence to speak about her feelings and this has sent her on a positive path in her career.

The young engineer told the Tele how losing touch with her friends during lockdown made her feel very alone.

At that time, she was midway through the first year of an electrical engineering course at West College Scotland and as the only female on the programme, she began to feel increasingly isolated.

Lara said: "The college course was all online and I had no social interaction at all.

"I was very lonely.

"My life was just college and I had nothing going on outside that and no friends to talk to."

Lara planned to go on to complete an HNC but ended up leaving and was accepted onto a maintenance engineering modern apprenticeship scheme at Diodes.

Things were looking up until she started to feel her mental health dipping again when she was midway through the first year of the programme.

Lara said: "I was making friends on the course, but I didn't have a social circle outwith that and seeing other people going out and having fun was really affecting my mental health."

When she looked for help, Man On's wellbeing service caught her interest.

She says that going along to the sessions gave her the strength she needed to keep going with her apprenticeship.

Lara added: "It gives me something to look forward to every week and has had a really positive impact on me.

"I've made a couple of new friends and feel like I have a social circle now.

"I can talk to people who understand where I'm coming from and it's a really helpful environment.

"It's helped my mood and my anxiety.

"I feel so much better than I did a couple of years ago."

At the group, Man On's creative wellbeing worker Kirsty McGregor-Burns uses creative therapy to help young people work through their experiences using their 'head, hands and heart'.

They take part in activities and talk freely about how they're feeling.

Kirsty says Lara is a great asset to the group and hopes that she will go on to join the service as a volunteer.

Lara said: "I'm so grateful that Man On exists, it's had a huge impact on me.

"I would love to volunteer so that I can help even just one person feel less alone."

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Lara with creative wellbeing worker Kirsty McGregor-Burns