Steve Walter

Steve Walter has worked for the manufacturers' organisation EEF, as a Health, Safety, Climate and Environment Adviser, where he specialised in occupational health related issues.

He is also a well established independent trainer and has delivered numerous presentations to conferences, seminars and workshops especially through the Employers' Forum on Disability, sharing his personal experience of mental ill health.

He originally took a degree in chemistry and biochemistry, then worked as a Principal Environmental Health Officer, completing his Masters degree in Business Administration.

Steve offers dynamic and interactive training, crucially drawing upon his personal experience of breakdown and rehabilitation back into work. His sessions cover a wide range of mental health problems and issues in the context of disability, overcoming stigma, and return to work following absence. He makes time to discuss a variety of business issues surrounding mental health problems such as communications, etiquette and finding solutions.

He experienced his first breakdown in 1997. There were various diagnoses, first simply an acute psychotic episode, then stress-related illness, followed by schizo-affective disorder and finally, after the second major breakdown, bipolar affective disorder.

He first told his story in 2001 and became an Ambassador for the Mind Out for Mental Health campaign and has appeared on BBC Business Breakfast. His experience has been vividly described in his book, Fast Train Approaching, which for some is both disturbing and shocking. It is available from Amazon or through links on Steve's website Making Connections Matter.