Craig Barden is the Fitness Manager at the GoodLife Northland Village location in Calgary, Alberta. This is his story in his own words.

I have battled clinical depression my entire adult life.

Throughout my twenties, I was not aware that clinical depression was an actual condition, let alone something that I was suffering from. I thought I was a failure, and I couldn’t understand how everyone around me could stay motivated. I felt useless, and even with the support of my friends and family, I fell into a very dark place.

I spent weeks in my bedroom. All I could manage to do was get up to eat and smoke. I almost lost my job due to all of the time I missed. I felt helpless, and I wanted to give up on life. It was only after seeing a TV commercial about clinical depression that I realised it was the same thing I was dealing with. That was when I began the long road to recovery.

After years of medication and counselling, I finally felt like I had control over my depression. I know that it’s something that will never entirely go away, but I no longer let it control me. I understand that I’m always at risk of relapse and that every day is a battle.

After my own recovery, I wanted to help others. More specifically, I wanted to help men because of the negative stigma that exists surrounding males and depression.

In 2016, I got involved with a group called Man Up for Men's Mental Health, created by the Movember Foundation as part of their Movember Caring Campus Project. This project was aimed at addressing the issues of mental health and substance misuse with a focus on the male freshmen demographic.

For the final six months of the project, I was employed by the Movember Foundation to develop a Man Up for Men’s Mental Health group at the University of Calgary. At the end of the project, I attended and spoke at the Caring Campus Project Conference, which reinforced that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

This is where the idea of using physical fitness as part of recovery began. I noticed that almost all of the men from the Caring Campus Project who battled mental illness were now in love with fitness. Being active is not just something we like to do, but it is something that we need to do.

I hope to use my knowledge as a Fitness Manager and Personal Trainer to make these same connections and bring more men into the gym as part of their recovery plan.