A MAN who has battled with depression is to attempt a 3400-mile solo row across the Atlantic to raise money for a mental health charity.
Niall Iain Macdonald plans to begin his voyage next month in a purpose-built ocean rowing boat. The 39-year-old from Inverness will take an uncommon route from New York to Stornoway, in the Western Isles, which he believes will take three months.
Mr Macdonald aims to raise £100,000 for Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) which provides help, information and support to those with mental health problems. He yesterday posed with the vessel outside the charity's offices in Glasgow.
He said: "With the help and support of family, friends and various health services, I overcame my problems.
"Since then I have tried to use my own experience to get people to talk more openly about mental health and show them that there is help and they are not alone."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article