Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. Just watch the media work strenuously to deny the elephant in the room – the fact that most suicides involve ordinary Australian blokes, often facing family breakup and the devastating consequences of divorce for men.
Boy, do they work hard to find stories that avoid talking about that.
Here’s the ABC talking about international students with mental health problems.
SBS talking about mental health problems. The Guardian writing about debt, isolation and loneliness.
I wrote recently for the Australian Financial Review about the fact that most of the six men who kill themselves in Australia every day don’t have a mental health problem, yet our governments are determined to ignore this fact. https://www.afr.com/policy/health-and-education/whitewashing-the-truth-of-why-men-kill-themselves-20190709-p525iu
Our new female National Suicide Prevention Officer, Christine Morgan, has mental health expertise and is constantly stressing the mental health angle, never acknowledging men have real reasons to feel depressed facing the loss of their children, false allegations of violence, loss of their homes and assets and huge legal fees.
Thursday is RUOK day and we’ll see more media stories urging people to try to persuade people to open up about their problems. A fine idea but still avoids the vital question of why we are doing nothing about prevention of suicide in men dealing with the key risk area – relationship breakup.
Organisations like DadsinDistress have for decades provided support for fathers in this situation yet they constantly battle for government support – while money pours out for all sorts of suicide initiatives which fail to address the central problem.
Where are all the journalists who happily lobby for funds for all sorts of good causes? Why don’t men matter?