How a Wigan woman's tattoo got people talking about mental health and raising hundreds for charity

By that time, she had already faced her own struggles with mental health and had already lost friends to suicide, and Josh’s heartbreaking decision could easily have proved too much to handle for everyone involved.

But this time would be different. Zoe decided to show Josh - and everyone else who ever felt they had run out of options - just how important they were.

And that something, an eye-catching tattoo of a semi-colon inside a love heart, became something of an icon, resonating with people as far away as Spain, and got them talking about mental health in a way Zoe had never experienced before.

“A semi colon is used when an author could’ve chosen to end their sentence but chose not to - the semi colon being someone’s life,” said the 25-year-old nurse from Springfield.

“At the time, I thought it was just raising a bit of awareness. I wasn’t expecting it to get the response it did. I think more than 40 people got the tattoo.”

Braving her lifelong fear of needles (the irony of which was not lost on Zoe, given her line of work), she booked in at Jester’s Ink in Pemberton to have the small tattoo inked on the back of her neck.

“I’d been planning it for about a week. I thought ‘how can I go about this?’

“It’s easy to say you’re going to do something and then back out. So I did it first, to show people what I’ve done and show them it would only take a few minutes of their time, and then started the fund-raiser.

“Within a few days, about 10 people had it done. I had the tattoo parlour message me and say they were having to stay and do longer hours to keep up with the demand!”

Over the next few weeks, Zoe’s inbox filled up with picture after picture of the tattoo inked on other people’s skin - from her own mum to a friend living in Magaluf - having been inspired to get talking more openly about their troubles.

And for every £25 Jester’s Ink charged for the tattoos, they donated £20 to the charity, with £5 covering the cost of ink. In total, more than £800 went towards helping others speak out about mental illness.

“I was overwhelmed, massively overwhelmed. I burst into tears because it had made a little bit of a difference,” said Zoe.

“I went to Manchester not too long after having the tattoo done, and I was asked about it in a bar. They said they’d seen it on Facebook, and they were from Derby. It was crazy that people knew about it who weren’t even from the area. That was very overwhelming.”

The fund-raising drive ended in August, but the good news didn’t stop there.

In October, 20-year-old Josh proposed to Zoe who, of course, said yes.

Forever grateful for the support she had shown him in his darkest hours, he also went ahead and got the tattoo done on his arm, with a tear-jerker of an addition - Zoe’s initial.

“He’s doing brilliant now, he’s back on the mend. He’s not out of the woods yet, but he is massively better,” Zoe said of her new fiancée.

“It’s a lesson learned that suicide is not the only way out, and that you will get better.

“People do judge it, and put a label on it, and that stops people speaking about it. Things get worse then and they can take their own life, or attempt to.”

Fortunately, Josh and Zoe are among the lucky ones. But recent statistics revealed that Wigan men are taking their own lives at a rate of one every 10 days, and were three times more likely to die by suicide than women.

Female suicide rates in the borough are also above the national average, with five out of every 100,000 women taking their own lives.

Zoe hopes the tattoo will be a permanent reminder for anyone who finds themselves in a dark place, that things can, and will, get better.

- If you need to speak to someone, Samaritans can be contacted 24 hours a day, seven days a week on 116 123 or at [email protected]

- CALM can be also be contacted nationwide on 0800 58 58 58.

- Mental health charity Mind also has a range of support and information available at mind.org.uk