Question, what if you could say “I helped save somebody’s life. I prevented a suicide”. Would you be proud to include this in your resume or life story? In 2019, a total of 3,318 deaths in Australia by suicide were recorded. Compare this to close to 1200 people died on Australian roads in 2019. What can we do about this? Firstly, we need to accept that suicide is part of our lives and we need to talk about it and not pretend it does not exist.

What can we do? We need to look out for signs someone is not coping or change of situation where they may be withdrawn, feeling angry or worthless and they are saying things like “I am a burden to everyone”. It is important we get them help but we need to make them feel safe and heard.

Please Note: If you have any concerns for yourself, please contact your Local GP or one of the many organisations for help.

What else can we do? We can get educated in understanding suicide. There is a lot of information you can tap into. I recently attended an ASIST course by LivingWorks. Their web site is http://www.livingworks.com.au/.

Who should attend such a course? Anybody and everybody. If we are all educated in the facts about suicide, I would imagine the suicide rate would decrease.

If you are not sure if you can handle a course about suicide, just think, how would you feel if someone you knew suicided? In the words of NIKE “Just do it”.

Today I want to highlight Anxiety.

According to Beyond Blue “Anxiety is the most common mental health condition in Australia.

On average, one in four people – one in three women and one in five men – will experience anxiety at some stage in their life.

In a 12-month period, over two million Australians experience anxiety.”

Anxiety is more than just feeling stressed or worried.

While stress and anxious feelings are a common response to a situation where we feel under pressure, they usually pass once the stressful situation has passed, or ‘stressor’ is removed.

Examples of anxiety disorders include panic attacks, obsessive-compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Symptoms include stress that’s out of proportion to the impact of the event, inability to set aside a worry and restlessness.

If you are suffering or know someone who is affected by Anxiety please get help for yourself or the person.

There is plenty of information from web sites like Beyond Blue, Black Dog Institute, Headspace.

Please keep safe.

Lucinda Brogden AM, Chair of the National Mental Health Commission mentioned in a Northern Beach Webinar that mental health discussion should be lead by the community. We are more comfortable talking to our friends than someone on the phone. Although the social workers on the various mental health organisations are well trained I believe we need to be able to help our friends, co-workers and family. We need to make sure we check on the people within our community to see how they are travelling.

In this time of working from home and Zoom meetings how do we know if the other people in the meeting are going? When we have a face to face meeting we can clearly see the person’s body language and see if they are okay. But where people can turn off cameras or we can only see part of the other person, how do we know if the other person is okay?

What can we look for, what signs? If the person is in tears that is easy to see but can we look at their behaviour, mood, talk, etc. Have they lost interest in things which they loved before.

We can still hold a discussion with others we just need to be more vigilant and continue ask if they are ok.

I was very fortunate this week in attending a Webinar conducted by Kirsten Peterson a sport and performance psychologist who discussed self-compassion. Kirsten better known as KP referred to Dr Kristin Neff’s work in self-compassion skills in daily life.

What is Self-Compassion? We find it easy to sit a comfort our family, friends, work mates and others. But when it comes to ourselves, we easy criticise ourselves and believe we don’t need/deserve the same understanding we show to others. Self-Compassion is just that. Being kind to ourselves.

We all make mistakes but instead of being hard on ourselves maybe we should be gentle. Yes we need to acknowledge our mistakes and make amends if required but we should forgive ourselves. Yes definitely, we need to learn from our mistakes and become better people though it.

If we can practice Self-Compassion, I believe is can only but help us with our mental health.

Why would I start a blog about mental health? I am not a expert in this area. We all have mental health like we all have physical health. Depending on how we are feeling will reflect on both. If we are feeling down we may not get the exercise we should and also our self-esteem may be down. If things are going well exercise seems easier and our thoughts about ourselves are positive.

In the past we have kept any thoughts of mental health to ourselves as it was not the thing to talk about. In this changing world with COVID-19 (Coronavirus) affecting all of us with things like lock downs, etc. and protests demanding better treatment of people regardless of who they are, I believe there has been no better time to talk about how day to day living is affecting our mental health.

This blog will attempt to allow people to discuss their mental health in a friendly non-judgement forum. There is also links to social media to allow people to access up to date information from such organisations like Beyond Blue , Black Dog Institute, Lifeline etc.

So lets start the discussion. Wouldn’t be good if we could talk about mental health like we talk about football or the weather.