Karl Staniford is one of 12 islanders recently selected to take part in an expedition above the Arctic Circle.

The group will be joined by expedition leader Matt Larsson-Clifford, who is a Swedish outdoors coach.

The spring expedition is organised by Omniamind, with the group aiming to raise £50,000 for Manx mental health charity Isle Listen.

Phil Quirk, the founder of Omniamind, said: ‘Every other year we conduct winter training for the UK International Search and Rescue Teams in Sweden where we provide their winter and Arctic training.

‘During last year’s training we discussed how beneficial such an experience would be for young people and as such, the concept was born.’

He added: ‘This year we chose Isle Listen as this charity above others resonated with the goals of the expedition “limitless”, which is to demonstrate the innate resilience within young people when given the opportunity.’

The expedition will be a 110km hike above the Arctic Circle which will last a week.

They will be completing the first section of the ‘Kungsleden’ or ‘Kingsway’ in the North of Sweden, making their way from Abisko to Nikaluokta.

The group will be travelling between 13km to 21km a day, and will each be pulling a sled with all their equipment.

They will have a survival training expedition in Sweden in January before they embark on the challenge.

The majority of the training for the expedition will take place in the Isle of Man following the survival training.

Karl is a 35-year-old customer services manager at Dandara.

He regularly campaigns for mental health support in the island.

Mr Staniford said: ‘It’s all prompted because I lost my brother Cam to suicide in 2019.

‘He had some turbulent years when he was growing up.

‘He did a few things that raised alarm bells which should have prompted me at the time to put my arm around his shoulder and say “what’s really going on?”

‘I didn’t do that at the time and looking back, that’s really painful.’

Mr Staniford added: ‘With my brother, in the later years, he appeared to have turned a corner.

‘He was a great guy, had loads of friends, was talented on the guitar and had a decent job.

‘What I’m trying to get across is suicide can happen to those who we least expect, so it is important as a society to break the stigma.’

‘The night he took his own life, we had had one last night out together. It was a great night and he was on fantastic form.

‘The beers caught up with me so I went home.

‘He got a taxi home with his friend and they were singing and having a laugh with the taxi driver.

‘Shortly after getting out of the cab he sent a strange text to his friend which read “I hate myself”.

‘No one had any idea of the pain and suffering he was going through.

‘For someone to even consider suicide as an option is absolutely horrendous. As a society we need to try our best to help the situation and I’ve tried to do everything I can to do just that.’

According to the Mental Health Foundation, 50% of mental health problems are established by age 14 and 75% by age 24.

Since his brother’s suicide, Mr Staniford has been campaigning for better mental health support in the island.

He said: ‘The current system is waiting for our 14-year-olds or 24-year-olds to become too uncomfortable before we help them.

‘In my opinion there is very little that we are doing in schools, or proactively apart from Isle Listen, which is why we’re raising money for them to help these kids understand the benefits of processing your mental and emotional pain.’

He added: ‘Our system is like waiting for a bath to overflow, and then placing buckets around the bath to solve it.

‘The water represents those in society who feel uncomfortable or may be struggling, the buckets are the services and charities turning things around for people.

‘The water that misses the buckets are the people in society like my little brother who get let down by the system and believe the only option is to take their own life.

‘I’ve been pushing a campaign to get resilience education into schools because I think if my brother had access to that information at the right time, and he knew the importance of processing mental and emotional pain, then it really could have helped him.’

In 2021, the island had 11 individuals who took their own lives, with the suicide prevention reporting that the rate of suicide in men is three times the rate in women.

Andrea Chambers, chief executive of Isle Listen, said: ‘Isle Listen are all about early help and support, and recognising people are struggling before they need one to one therapy.’

She added: ‘Over the past few years we have seen demand for our services treble, and struggled to keep up with the growth, so the £50,000 is amazing.

‘It will help us continue to provide our educational programme, where our wellbeing team goes to every secondary school, and almost every primary school, and works alongside teachers to talk about self-esteem, bullying, the mental health impacts of social media and so on.

‘The money will also help us continue to run our one to one services by our team of practitioners, who help those who are struggling and provides up to six sessions per person.’

Ms Chambers explained that Isle Listen doesn’t receive government funding.

‘Particularly in the past few years with Covid, and everything else going on, the demand has just gone up,’ she said. ‘It is important that we educate people from as young as possible to show that mental health is something that we all have, and you have to find your own coping mechanisms before people get so poorly that they need that one to one help.

‘We are so grateful to the guys doing the expedition, who are raising funds and awareness for the work we do.’

The participants’ resilience will be tested in the expedition.

Mr Staniford explained: ‘We have to do the survival training because this expedition is a serious one.

‘We are totally unsupported, there’s no hospitals, so anything we need we bring with us like food.

‘We’re going to stay in some huts, luckily, there’s some huts on the way, so we don’t have to sleep outside which is a good thing.’

The huts are strategically placed with about a day’s worth of travel between them. They expect the temperature for the expedition to be -35 degrees celsius.

Mr Staniford said: ‘We were told if you buy a certain material of clothing, when you haven’t washed for six days, you don’t smell as bad.

‘It’s just when you hear stuff like that, you think, wow, this is going to be a huge challenge, even the simple things like being able to have a shower and put clean clothes on.’

‘On top of that, you’re going to be out, and it’s going to be hard work walking long distances in consecutive days and really harsh environments, but one thing I am looking forward to is the scenery. It’s going to be unreal, just solitude.’