Lauren McDonough

Lauren McDonough is a mental health advocate, suicide survivor, bilateral below knee amputee and disabled curve model.

Lauren is a 26-year-old female who has lived with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder since she was 13 years old. She spent a lot of her adolescence being hospitalised for her mental health conditions. During these times, she didn’t think things could get much worse, but in 2017, at the age of 19, she hit absolute rock bottom. On the 9th of May 2017, in an attempt to end her own life, she ended upstepping in front of a train. As a result of this, she lost both of her lower legs and fractured the lower half of her spine. She spent a week in an induced coma, followed by spending many months in hospital. Undergoing over 30+ surgeries, with a lot of complications, she was initially told she would never walk again.

After spending many months in hospital, she then went into rehab. Putting the opinions and expectations from others of what she would and wouldn’t be able to do, she persevered and learn to walk again on two prosthetic legs. Still to this day, she says it is the most rewarding experience of her life.

Lauren shares her mental health journey for a living. Having experienced the horrendous amount of stigma and misunderstandings associated to mental health conditions, it has become her life mission to share her journey to not only provide hope for others, but to help people understand how mental health conditions are like, from a lived experience perspective. To make people feel seen, heard, loved, understood and less alone in this world embodies who she is, but is also how she aims to make people feel through the work she does.

She is extremely passionate about creating positive change in this world - whether it be through her passion, drive and determination for mental health advocacy work, or through her work as a disabled, curve model. Helping people and making a difference in the world in a meaningful, positive way is her life mission, and by sharing her journey, she hopes to do just that.