"Heavy Metal Therapy are a registered Community Interest Company (Company number 14260502). We started in 2018. Kate had the idea and asked me and a few others if we would like to be involved. Kate said she’d like to start a Facebook page for Heavy Metal Therapy (not an actual therapy but more like how ‘retail therapy’ is used as a term for something people do/find useful) and we may get 500 likes but it would be something we could try as we like metal music, know other people that also (like us) know it’s helpful and it just grew from there."

"It started as a Facebook page but as people gifted us with their stories about metal music and how it helped them we found they'd get lost on the Facebook 'wall' so Kate created our website. We've grown from that into an organisation that has peer support groups, expert by experience resources and playlists curated by the community of metal heads. We never intended to sell anything but as anyone in the metal community knows we all love a band t-shirt and people kept asking for ours so we started with one t-shirt design and (just as the HMT project has naturally evolved due to people's idea/input/requests for us to do stuff) we have hoodies, long sleeved and other items for sale. Profits from any merch goes back into running our peer support groups or to print resources for stalls at gigs or festivals."

"Kate lives nearby and so Wakefield was chosen as it's a good central base (I'm based in Sheffield). We were lucky enough to find Nova (who are also in Wakefield) who supported us to apply for CIC status which we achieved in 2022. We have started a new partnership with the Coffeewrite coffee shop in Wakefield which is fantastic as it means we are able to continue our peer support group in Wakefield."

"We started at Call Of The Wild Festival earlier in 2025 and then we had our first Download Festival with Raven Records. While at Download we were invited to take part in a live recording of the Loaddown podcast from the Courtyard stage at Download (which was my favourite!). More recently we had a stall at ArcTanGent so we've had a rather busy festival season which has been fantastic!"

"We're going to run a project evaluation of the Peer Support groups to look at whether they are helpful and can then hopefully use that as evidence for additional groups in other areas of the U.K."

If you'd like to find out more about Heavy Metal Therapy and the fantastic work that they do, please visit their website here: Heavy Metal Therapy – Heavy Metal and Mental Health