Sitting patiently, waiting. No real desire to engage in conversation – despite the familiar, friendly faces spattered around the hall. A youthful energy on an occasion usually more suited to a much older crowd.
A portrait on the wall. An impressive portrait, a surfer, radiant smile, Hollywood looks. An empty lecturn. It could be the launch of a book or an award ceremony. It should be. It should be just the beginning. Instead it is the end.
Music starts, we stand. Our collective hearts open with the doors, and as the coffin is carried in, it leaves in its wake an almost tangible fog. The dark, penetrating pain of grief.
In the last 20 years , so much has been done to raise awareness to the importance of mental health. To reduce the stigma of mental ill health and teach children and adults alike how to access the support available to them. Yet a 5-minute google search will show the grim reality that suicide rates, though bouncing slightly from year to year, remain much the same. A flat line. People are taking their lives at a disturbing rate.
In 2020 roughly 15 women and 46 men suicided in Australia. Each week. 9 of us every day. (3 times more than Covid-19)
So why are we not seeing change?
We all now know how important it is to check-in with one another and be there for each other. It’s ok not to be ok, right? Surely, we should be seeing more people getting support in time, and these rates falling.
But, despite this changing of attitudes and gradual breaking down of stigma. Our own personal thoughts, mental battles and challenges remain just that – for the most of us – personal, and deeply private.
Creating a space to talk is an important start – but it’s not how we learn.
Leading by example is a tremendously empowering strategy for all leaders – it is also the most accessible strategy for all of us in this space. For children, growing into teenagers and onto adulthood, we owe it to them to share our stories in the exact same way that we want and need them to.
So what might this actually look like?
Now if we look at our remarkably complex skeletons – 206 bones working together to allow us to move, to work, to play sport -if we suspect injury, through pain or discomfort, we are quick to get it checked out and just as quick to ‘instagram’ the cool X-ray picture to let our friends know that we’ve cracked a tibia. Not to mention alerting our workplace to the extra support that we’ll need put into place. As a result of our behaviour our children are actually pretty chuffed to have their arm in plaster. 206 bones.
Our brains are made up of 86 billion neurons with a support staff of 85 billion glial cells looking after them. That’s 171 billion things to go wrong or break and impact our mental health.
When was the last time you shared with your children if you were struggling? Do you explain those anti-depressant tablets on the bedside table, in the same manner, as you did for the course of antibiotics you took for your infected fingernail?
If you are filling scripts at the pharmacy, are there (or would there be) some medications you feel shame collecting? Maybe you ask for a bag? These are the thoughts we need to challenge. This stigma that is wrapped in our core is the stigma that we must break if we are to have any chance to save others.
