# Mental health challenges and the breaking point

- **Episode:** [191](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/191.md) (2025-04-24)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** mental-health, adhd, burnout
- **Time:** 31:39–36:02 (start 1899s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/191?t=1899](https://truthliesandwork.com/191?t=1899)

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[31:39] Amit Singh Kalley: You know, I've always had ADHD. I only got diagnosed last year, so that's always caused a lack of understanding in who I am. It's led to friendship issues over the years. It's led to, Challenges that at the time I didn't know why they were challenges. It's only now in hindsight I'm able to look back. But then losing my mother was a big thing for me and losing her to ovarian cancer at a young age, the circumstances around her death. She died 4 days before my 30th birthday, 6 months before my wedding. That really sort of sent me into a bit of a spiral. But the real, I guess what What saved me from going completely out of control was I was starting this new life as well. I was getting married and I was gonna build this new life. So losing mum was probably the start of where the mental health issues really came from. And it was where I started questioning my, almost my place. I don't wanna go as far as saying I was suicidal. I wasn't. And I would never try to belittle those that genuinely are. Yeah, that sort of started the journey around what I wanted to do with my life and where I wanted to be. I'd been on this route to headship in schools and I knew I was gonna get there and I was pretty young and I was on my way and I just decided slowly that maybe this isn't for me. And then our daughter was born during COVID So, you know, we all remember what life was like then. She was born with 3 holes in her heart and that was huge as parents, first-time parents for us to deal with that. I didn't have mum around. My wife is from Tanzania. Her parents still live in Tanzania. And so, her parents weren't around. Our extended family and friends were all shut off from us because of COVID restrictions. And so, we were dealing with this trauma of a very, very unwell daughter constantly going into Great Ormond Street for appointments and consultants and emergency surgeries and all this kind of stuff. And all of these things really just built into this Kind of me thinking, I'm done here. I'm done doing what I'm doing. I need to do something different that allows me to be successful because I am quite ambitious. I am quite a driven person, but at the same time, be happy. And goodness me, for me, being happy was cherishing that time with our daughter. We didn't know whether we would get to see much of our daughter actually. We were told that it You know, there are children that are born with holes in their hearts that don't make it. And she had open heart surgery at 10 months of age after lots of canceled operations and lots of other surgeries she had to have. And it was, yeah, that really got me kind of thinking, I've lost my mum, almost lost a daughter. I need to have a bit of a rethink here
[34:22] Al Elliott: Give us the sort of timeline around that. So were you still in education at this point?
[34:27] Amit Singh Kalley: I was. So my mum died in January of 2018. And I was, yeah, very much still in education then. I didn't have the courage. I mean, I wasn't in the headspace to think of leaving at that stage. For me, it was just, I've gotta carry on, you know, I've gotta get on with work. And my school at the time was very supportive. It was when COVID came that I really started questioning whether I wanted to stay in education. I didn't, and this could be the ADHD, I don't know, but you know, I was jealous of the fact that my wife as an accountant was able to work from home all the time and I In between lockdowns and all of that, had to be in school and I was dealing with COVID tests and all that. I just wasn't interested. And I just, and it was, there was the superficial level, which was, I don't care about this, but there was the deep-rooted level, which this is actually impacting my happiness. I get up, well, where I used to get up in the morning and think, I can't wait to get to school today. Now I was getting up in the morning thinking, I don't want to go today. And then what I decided to do was maybe I needed to change an environment. I'd been in the same school for 9 years. And I decided to change environments. I became a deputy head at a school in East London. And then for the first few months, that change in environment did reenergize me because I was on a new project, I was doing something new. But then those doubts started creeping in and I, at the point of a year of being in that school with this map towards headship, you know, I was gonna start applying for headships. I just handed in my resignation and said, I'm done. I'm done. That was in, uh, that was in April of 2022. So, uh, mum died in January '18, daughter was born in May '20, resignation handed in, uh, or left my job in April '22