Love Island's Dr Alex pairing up with Bear Grylls on new app for men

Following years of gruelling ward rounds, you might expect Dr Alex George to cherish every possible opportunity to take the load off his feet. But far from it, he assures me, as he stands in preparation for our interview over Zoom from his south London home.

“It’s very much a deliberate choice,” explains the 32-year-old, who worked in A&E for five years.

“If you’re very static and sit too much or you don’t get your morning walk, it can really affect your mood.”

Having lost his younger brother Llyr to suicide in July 2020, mental health is a subject close to the TV doctor’s heart. He was appointed Britain’s inaugural Youth Mental Health Ambassador by the then Prime Minister Boris Johnson in February 2021.

And Alex continues to advocate for new support programmes including ground-breaking new men’s mental health app Mettle, believed to be the first of its kind to specifically help men, and which he has launched with TV hypnotist Paul McKenna and adventurer Bear Grylls.

But before we delve deeper into that, Carmarthen-born Alex has already begun reeling off his tips for a healthy lifestyle. Everything starts with his dedication to “stand and talk, or walk and talk, as often as possible”.

And that means taking as many steps as possible, as he explains: “I’m rigid about it. My life has a lot of chaos and uncertainty within it, so I’m a very habits and routine-based person.

“I get up at 6.30am every morning and I’m out of the door at 7.30am for an hour’s walk every single day – even if it’s sleeting, filthy and miserable.

“In fact, if it is sleeting, filthy and miserable, it feels like even more of an accomplishment. It’s all about recognising the tools that we all have that are going to help keep me on an even keel, which hasn’t always been the case for me over the last few years.”

Since becoming a contestant on the 2018 series of ITV’s Love Island – a world of fake tans and contrived drama – Alex’s life has been a rollercoaster of conflicting emotions.

Thrust into the limelight after appearing on the millennial dating reality show, he initially embraced the resulting attention and made regular appearances on Good Morning Britain, Lorraine and Loose Women to talk about mental health.

But his own psychological wellbeing was catastrophically shattered on that fateful day when Llyr, who was training to start at medical school, took his own life.

“Without doubt that was my lowest ebb,” says Alex, whose emotions about the tragedy are understandably still raw.

“He was 10 years younger than me, and had a place at Southampton Medical School to study to be a doctor – and I was so, so proud of him, as we’re not from a medical family.

“No one from any other generation in our family had been to university and everyone was so excited that he was going to follow in my footsteps, but then right before he started, bam… he was gone.”

At the time of Llyr’s death, Alex was working on the front line of the pandemic and found himself struggling to cope. “It was very hard and since then, I’ve had suicidal ideations many times, but over time my mental health has improved,” he says.

“I talked to people and being able to vocalise my feelings to a therapist made a huge difference, as did taking the SRRI antidepressant Sertraline. And I’ve also completely cut out alcohol.”

Rather than be crushed by his traumatic loss, Alex began a personal quest to improve the nation’s mental health – particularly for men, who are traditionally more reluctant to discuss their feelings. Indeed, the biggest cause of death for men under 40 in the UK is suicide.

He started his mental health campaigning back in 2018 when he spoke to former prime minister Theresa May about the importance of promoting mental health education in schools.

“But obviously my brother’s death was the petrol on the flames for me,” he adds poignantly.

His almost evangelical desire to transform a devastating negative into an enduring positive, has energised Alex to launch Mettle.

Their online toolkit, created by a team of experts at Imperial College, uses an evidence-based approach to help men maintain a healthy psyche using meditation, hypnosis and breathwork.

“Men need to do a lot of work on their emotional literacy, which should be taught in schools now, and that’s where Mettle, which means resilience, can help,” explains Alex. “I grew up in a very rugby-centric family in Wales and the messaging around mental health back then was essentially: ‘Big boys don’t cry. Don’t be a girl’. Really harmful, toxic things like that.

“And I know many males have been brought up to believe that men have to be strong, that they shouldn’t cry, that they must be tough and emotionally withdrawn.

“Even though I work in this field, I’ve felt a huge amount of shame in the past during my darkest times.”

He says he experienced his first bout of serious depression in his early 20s.

“I felt too ashamed to tell my medical school or speak to the doctor because I was certain that I would be kicked out if they knew that I was suffering,” he admits.

“I ended up getting to a level of extreme despair before I eventually called my mum and admitted how bad things were.”

Thankfully, the public narrative around mental health has transformed immensely in recent years, and continues to improve.

At the heart of that shift have been the Prince and Princess of Wales, who Alex has worked with on several mental health campaigns.

“I was very nervous about meeting Prince William and Catherine,” says Alex, “because I really look up to them and the work they have done in the mental health space, and their work has stood the test of time.

“And it’s not just lip service. They’re committed to the cause, and they really do know what they’re talking about.”

Alex’s own commitment to protecting his mental resilience has also reaped benefits in terms of his physical health. Since he’s stopped drinking, he’s lost an incredible six stone in addition to being cognitively sharper. “I’m six foot three and at my heaviest I was 20-something stone,” he says.

“Now I’m down to 14 stone and that’s because I’m not drinking. “I’m exercising, I’m walking every day, I’m doing my therapy and I’m practising gratitude every day.”

Alex is also keen to combat the harm being done to the next generation by influential online toxic males like Andrew Tate. “His existence shows there is a demand for his message but he’s meeting that need in the wrong way, in the same way that I used to use alcohol to numb my grief,” he says.

“It’s all about using the right tools to meet that need.”

Nearly three and half years after his brother’s suicide, Alex feels he is finally learning to deal with his loss.

“I feel quite content right now, but a lot of that is because I’ve learnt to label how I feel, which many, many men still struggle with,” he says.

“And recognising and expressing how we feel, perhaps before things escalate into a fully blown depression or a very dark place, is often the first step to doing something about it. “It’s vitally important and that’s why this app is so important – let’s not forget, the biggest cause of death for men under 40 in the UK is suicide, and that shouldn’t be a metric that exists. We want that number down.

“We want people living and we want men to exist happily and not to experience low mood on a regular basis and the aim of society shouldn’t just be preventing mental illness, but we need to educate people about the steps that can be taken to reduce the chances of it happening in the first place.”

On a personal level, he is looking forward to a stable and well-balanced 2024.

“These days I focus on what I’m trying to achieve, and I find gratification and fulfilment from the right things and my happiness comes from knowing that I’ve made a difference, whether other people recognise that or not,” he says.

“I’m doing my little bit and I know in myself that it will make a difference. And to me, that’s the comfort I need. I’m happy with that.”

Mettle is available to download now. Users get a 14-day free trial, thereafter subscriptions are available for £12.99 a month and £99.99 annually. As a launch offer, users get 50 per cent off when they subscribe