The author and mental health campaigner on not fitting in at school, being on the Covid frontline, and how grief inspired him to help others
Born in Carmarthen in 1991, Dr Alex George is a former NHS doctor, an author and a mental health campaigner. After studying medicine at the Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry, he worked as an A&E doctor in London before joining the cast of 2018’s Love Island. In 2021, he was appointed the UK government’s youth mental health ambassador. He is the author of five books; his latest, Happy Habits, is out now, with Am I Normal? published on 15 January.
Mum loved to make outfits for special occasions, and Christmas was no exception. It was an important time of year for our family; she was determined for us to experience the magic of tradition. It would have been a small, intimate day in Capel Dewi in Carmarthenshire – just me, my parents, my two brothers and my grandmother.
I was a happy, sensitive boy, with a very vivid imagination. But a few years after this was taken, I started to have friction with the school system. Rejection sensitivity dysphoria is not yet part of the framework of diagnosis for ADHD, but a lot of us find it the hardest part. It meant that criticism from teachers and friends – even when they weren’t actually rejecting me – would cripple me. I was constantly living with the feeling of not being good enough and not fitting in. I struggled to concentrate in class. Once, I remember asking absent-mindedly if Santa was a man or woman, and the teacher went so ballistic that the teacher next door heard and came to comfort me.
