1. BY IAN COCKERILL PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD URRUTIA
STATE
OF MIND
SEPTEMBER 2016 127126 SEPTEMBER 2016
THE
EPIDEMIC
Save for the pinstriped waistcoat and
red power tie he sports on his
company website, Bernie Mitchell
doesn’t present as your standard real
estate wheeler and dealer. Then again,
he doesn’t come across as someone
who tried to take his own life with a
25-centimetre knife either.>
SUICIDEISTHENO.1KILLEROF
AUSTRALIANMENINTHEIRPRIME.
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SOFT-SPOKEN, with unveiled eyes, Mitchell projects an air
of calm assurance bordering on serenity when we meet in
the office of his property management company above the
stylish furnishing stores of Sydney’s Waterloo. Dressed in
a black sweater and jeans, the 42-year-old’s warm greeting
offers a jarring contrast to the knowledge that, at 24, he
was so hollowed out that death seemed preferable to life.
Beyond the mysterious workings of brain chemistry, the
reasons remain troublingly elusive. The product of a solid
and loving middle-class family, he enjoyed an expensive
private school education, a loving partner, a clear direction
in life and few apparent demons. Probe for any great
emotional knots and you learn that, if anything, “I’m an
over-sharer”. By his own lights, he’s also a joker and “a
glass half-full guy . . . no, more like a glass-full guy”.
It was this uncomplicated version of himself that
completed a cabinetmaking apprenticeship while living at
home, before deciding there was more money to be made
as an insurance broker. Hungry to succeed, he completed
a three-day sales course and jumped headlong into a
commission-only job. It was, he recalls, a “real boiler-
room” environment: 50 salespeople in an open-plan office,
40 cold calls a day, 70-plus hours a week, fortnightly sales
targets. Most recruits lasted three months.
Clearing that first hurdle, Mitchell moved into an
apartment with his high-school sweetheart, Sam, but
something wasn’t right. “I was exhausted and I didn’t
understand why,” he recalls, shaking his head gently in
the way you might express wonder at the first time you
noticed a mole had changed colour. “I’d never not looked
forward to going to work on Monday. But now I was tired
. . . tired . . . tired.”
After a year in his job, he found himself in front of a
doctor, being told he was suffering from depression. “I
didn’t understand it – this wasn’t me,” he says, the sheer
implausibility of it still evident in his eyes. “Nothing was
wrong with my life.”
Prescribed antidepressants, he now struggled to make
it into the office for more than a couple of hours a day. “It
was a case of get up . . . brush your teeth . . . brush your
hair . . . make the toast. Every step was a big effort.” He
struggled to put a sentence together or think straight. “I
was scared to get on the phone. I forgot how to do my job.
I was thought-stricken.”
Then, out of the blue, a spike in his mood. But rather
than presage his escape from depression, it led to a
diagnosis of bipolar disorder. What was going on with
his brain? Sinking further into a deep funk, he now rarely
ventured out of the unit, except when Sam dragged
him along to see friends. Beset with anxiety attacks and
experiencing mood swings as often as every 20 minutes,
he was prescribed eight different drugs, none of which
provided relief.
“It was draining. There was a feeling of despair,
hopelessness, of life tumbling down, of not being able to
do anything to stop it. My head hurt and I lost the ability to
see ahead. I was worried about money, about work, about
whether I would ever recover. Death began to look like the
only way out. I just wanted the pain to end.”
And so, on a late spring day, he flicked on the TV after
Sam had left for work, then returned to bed, his mind
in turmoil. Hours passed. Finally he rose, found himself
looking at the high priestess of positivity, Oprah Winfrey,
on the TV, and switched it off. Rummaging in the kitchen
drawer, he drew out a long knife, a housewarming present
from his parents.
“I sat down on the lounge, my thoughts going to and
fro, just trying to work up the courage. I ruled out thrusting
it into my heart – I was worried about hitting a rib – before
putting the knife to my arm.”
He cut, deep enough for blood to flow, but not so
deep as to be fatal. Instantly, he knew he needed to cut
more savagely to finish the job. “I really wanted to follow
through. But at the same time I had an inkling that it wasn’t
right that I should want to do this.”
That flimsy, floating thought turned into a lifevest. He
stared at the phone on the table in front of him, picked it
up, and dialled a doctor who’d been treating him over the
preceding year. “I said ‘I have a knife to my arm’, and when
he asked me to not do anything, that was enough, his voice
was enough, just knowing he cared.”
Eighteen years on, the last few words hang in the air
between us. Recognising that someone, anyone, cares
seems like a small concession to continue living. All too
often, though, it’s one men aren’t making.
SIX MEN DIE BY SUICIDE every day in Australia. Every . . .
single . . . day.
That’s six sons, brothers, fathers and – according to
Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released earlier this
year – together they made up three-quarters of the 2864
people who took their own life in 2014, the latest year for
which statistics are available.
Why the gender imbalance? The explanation is
threefold. Men are more impulsive, more sensitive to
financial distress – the bread-winner tag endures – and more
likely to choose violent, and hence more effective, means.
Equally confronting is the knowledge that, for men between
the ages of 20 and 44, suicide is the number one cause of
death, ahead of road accidents, disease and any health issue
you care to name. It wasn’t meant to be this way.
Back in the Nineties, a national summit on suicide saw
a surge in services and programs designed to tackle the
issue head on. In the intervening years RUOK Day (ruok.
SIXMENDIEBYSUICIDE
EVERYDAYINAUSTRALIA.
EVERY...SINGLE...DAY
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SEPTEMBER 2016 131130 SEPTEMBER 2016
org.au), Soften The Fuck Up (softenthefckup.spurprojects.
org) and programs like Mental Health First Aid (mhfa.
com.au) have risen to the challenge. For all that, the 2014
ABS figures revealed the highest suicide rate since 2001,
prompting Lifeline Australia chairman and former NSW
Liberal Party leader John Brogden to call for suicide to be
declared a national emergency.
Brogden followed up by recommending that the suicide
toll be published like the road toll. He wants it in our faces
and under our noses, a pungent and nagging reminder
that we walk among wounded individuals who need our
support. He spoke, of course, from experience, his call
coming on the 10th anniversary of his own attempted
suicide aged 36, made after he resigned from politics for
inappropriate conduct.
As one of the Mental Health First Aid program’s
founders, the University of Melbourne’s Professor Tony
Jorm shares Brogden’s concerns, while stopping short of
declaring the 2014 figures a trend. It will be some years, he
says, before we can be sure they are not “a statistical blip”.
In the meantime, Jorm is placing his faith in programs
like his – MHFA has been adopted in 23 countries since its
inception in 2001 – that put the emphasis on equipping
people to fill the space between the suicide candidate and
services on stand-by to help. His one reservation?
Men, he says, need to do more to help other men.
“Men need to lift their game,” he insists, pointing
out that when instructors present the MHFA program
in workplaces, male faces are notable by their absence.
“When it’s voluntary and when it comes to caring, it’s
women who overwhelmingly turn up.”
Which is strange, isn’t it, considering that we’re the
ones taking our own lives, the ones crying over mates and
fathers and sons? The ones who, as Bernie Mitchell attests
and the statistics highlight, can be knocked sideways by
life no matter how strong a wind is at our back when we
first leave harbour.
MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with suicide came before I was even
out of primary school, when a friend’s mother overdosed.
Then, while visiting remote aboriginal communities
in the Northern Territory a decade ago, a teenage boy
hanged himself. That same year, a former work colleague
swallowed pills before wading into a Melbourne river. More
recently, a friend jumped from a Sydney headland, leaving
behind two high-school-age children.
“The truth is, most people know someone, and that’s a
huge motivation,” says Jorm.
If you happen to be one of those fortunate people who
don’t know anyone, here’s the thing. Yes, deeply scarred
battlers from broken or abusive homes, unemployable
heroin or ice addicts, men with severe psychological
problems – they all feature among the suicide statistics.
But then, so do lawyers and accountants, heavy-machine
operators and electricians, teachers, soldiers and policemen.
Men who, behind their suits and their uniforms and their
King Gees, are picked apart by unrelenting pressure and
six-minute billing units, trauma, toxic marriage breakdowns,
financial setbacks, grief. Men who, for all you know, could be
you if you could just peer into your future.
As US psychologist and suicide expert David Jobes
observed, “every man is capable of reaching a desperate
place where suicide can move onto his psychological
radar screen. But who goes there, when, how and why
is this unique interplay of biochemistry, social forces,
family modelling and other factors. How those queue
up is remarkably complex and specific to the man who’s
struggling at that moment.”
Complex and specific. But there are aspects those who
end their own life share too: a sense of being trapped in
their lives, a belief they’re a burden on others, and a gradual
disconnection from the world and everything that inhabits
it. Bernie Mitchell recalls loving the woman he shared an
apartment with; he just didn’t feel anything for her.
When it came to a choice between life and death,
though, it was the realisation that someone cared for him
that stayed Mitchell’s hand. Which is precisely where you
enter this story.
Because all but a very few people actually want to die.
Like Bernie, they just want their pain to stop. And while
they’re weighing their choices, being reminded that there’s
someone who cares for them – even when it’s obvious to all
those around them that many people care for them – can be
the thread that draws them back to safety.
In the process, they’re reminded of one incontestable
truth, a truth often cited as the most potent barrier
preventing them moving to the final act: that while their
pain might end, it merely passes to those around them.
MELBOURNE SOCIAL WORKER Russell Miles concedes
he comes from a long male line of “worry warts”. It’s an
understated descriptor – his father, a railway man like his
grandfather before him, worried himself into suicide.
Life continued to throw brickbats Russell’s way when his
wife, Rosemary, died of breast cancer, leaving him to raise
three sons. Another challenge arrived when his middle son,
Nick, was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome and grew
into a young man locked in battle with the black dog. As
someone who taught a TAFE course that included suicide
prevention, Russell was alert to his son’s struggles and
made every effort to keep Nick engaged and connected.
It wasn’t easy, even as Nick took part-time jobs in
pubs and aged care, joined his older brother Chris at the
gym, and turned his passion for drawing into art classes.
“You just want to lock them in a room so they can’t hurt
themselves, but that’s not practical,” says Russell.
Instead, searching for ways to boost Nick’s spirits and
knowing he had fond memories of childhood trips to
Tasmania, Russell suggested a holiday there early last year.
He and his partner, Louise, would drive around the island
before rendezvousing with Nick and his younger brother,
Liam, in Hobart.
Two days before they were due to meet, Russell’s phone
rang. It was Chris. “I remember it so clearly. He said, ‘Nick’s
dead. He’s killed himself’. I went numb.”
Nick, 22, had walked a kilometre from the home he
shared with his father to a railway line and then waited for
a train. Says Russell: “From talking to the policeman I have
a mental image of the driver sounding his horn repeatedly,
frantically, and trying to stop. Of Nick’s utter determination
and the driver’s utter distress as he tried to prevent it.
“Trains were our family thing, and I’ve got no end of
photos of Nick with trains. Now there’s this hideous thing
that spoils a memory.”
Somehow, Russell is able to look back on the “deep
grief” Nick felt after his mother died when he was just nine
3 STEPS TO PREVENT SUICIDE
ASK
If you suspect someone
might be suicidal, don’t
tip-toe around the subject – ask
them outright: “Are you thinking
about suicide?” Don’t worry that
you’ll plant the idea in their head.
The reality is there’s quite a
build-up as people imagine ways
they might take their life – what
experts call ideation. Most people
with thoughts of suicide want to
talk about it. They want to live but
desperately need someone to
hear their pain and offer help to
keep them safe. If they don’t want
to talk, don’t give up. Try another
time, or let someone else
(parents, a counsellor, another
mate) know you’re worried.
ACT
Talk about steps you can
take together to keep
them safe. And don’t agree to
keep it a secret. You shouldn’t be
the only one supporting them
and you may need help to
persuade them to get help. If you
feel they are in immediate
danger, call a crisis line like
Lifeline (13 11 14) or 000. If you
can get in straight away, visit a GP
or psychologist with them. Even if
the danger is not immediate,
suicidal thoughts may return, so
ask them to promise to tell
someone if they do – it will make
it more likely they will.
LISTEN
If they say “Yes”, let
them do most of the
talking and don’t dismiss
their feelings or judge them.
Listen to their story without
imposing your own outlook.
They’ll often feel a great
sense of relief that someone
wants to talk about their
darkest thoughts.
Sources:Beyondblue,Lifeline
Active intervention is
recommended if you
believe someone is at
risk of suicide.
STATE
OF MIND

4. ‘‘Dummyquote
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SEPTEMBER 2016 133132 SEPTEMBER 2016
and allow “that was a lot for him to carry and he doesn’t
have to carry it anymore”. But it’s an insufficient salve.
“The level of awareness, of knowing what he must have
gone through . . . that tears me up.”
Was there anything he’d learnt that he could apply in his
role as a social worker?
“That as much as we’d like it, there aren’t any ready-made
responses that fit every case. It’s such an individual thing. If
I look at how I might have done things differently, I can’t see
anything, but I’m still the parent and so I’m still responsible.
“I know I will carry this until the day I die.”
You can’t help but wonder: would hearing that have
impelled Nick to step off the track?
SO, WHAT TO DO? How do you, at ground level, play a part
in reducing the suicide toll?
By being as subtle as a sledgehammer.
“It’s a very hard conversation to ask someone ‘Are you
thinking about suicide?’,” explains Jorm, “but without
being able to use that word the sufferer is isolated. Once
you open that conversation up, you open the gateway for
support. Facebook friends aren’t going to do it.”
It’s a new spin on manning-up, and a decidedly
uncomfortable one. For both parties. A 2015 Medical
University of Vienna study of male suicide survivors found
that, for some of the men, the “feelings associated with
being vulnerable provoke greater anxiety than the thought
of being dead”.
The sentiments would come as no great shock to
Gerald Haslinger, an MHFA instructor in Sydney. One of
the 44-year-old’s earliest memories, “when I was three or
four”, was hearing how his godmother’s son had found his
father hanging in the attic of the block of apartments where
they lived in Austria.
“So I guess you could say it’s always been an area of
interest,” says Haslinger, who acquired his own experience
of grim outlooks – “I went to some very dark places” – in 14
years working in finance. Changing tack a decade ago, he
completed a psychology degree and, like a spelunker who’s
extracted himself from a deep cave, now spends his days
returning to comfort others mired in the gloom.
“When someone says, ‘I feel like shit and I don’t think
I can do it anymore’, I’d like to think we’ve moved beyond
saying, ‘Don’t be stupid, you’ll feel better with a couple
of beers in you’, and taking them down the pub. It’s an
invitation to help.
“Women are much better at bringing in others to help
solve shitty situations. Men try to solve things internally at
first and only externalise when we’re right on the edge, if
at all.”
And this is where another, distinctly male, trait needs to
be suppressed: our impulse to problem-solve.
“What they want to hear is, ‘That must be really hard’,
not suggestions on how to fix it,” says Haslinger. “You
need to be willing to get in the hole with them for five or 10
minutes, and resist the temptation to pull them out.”
Having spent years after his suicide attempt battling
to achieve equilibrium, Bernie Mitchell agrees. “You
don’t want them to be a doctor. It’s just a matter of being
together. And don’t give them the option by asking, ‘Do
you want me to come over?’, because they’ll say ‘No’.
It’s best to swing by. As uncomfortable as that might be,
they’ll appreciate it. They just may not say it.” Think of
that connection as providing a barrier between thought and
deed. And obstacles, whether physical or psychological,
are remarkably effective at preventing suicides. A recent
Black Dog Institute study found that barriers and signs
installed at notorious suicide locations – barriers that could
be easily bypassed by a determined person – cut suicide
attempts by up to 90 per cent.
“Most people who think about suicide are ambivalent
. . . so if someone is blocked, they get extra time to think
about other options,” explained the report’s author, Dr
Karolina Krysinska.
Haslinger puts it another way. “It’s rare that anyone
wakes up and is 100 per cent certain they’re going to kill
themselves that day. Everyone has a tug of war. They know
they’ll devastate their parents, their kids.”
In that tug of war, simply showing you care carries more
weight than you might credit.
Haslinger recalls one hard-drinking client who’d
received the rough end of the pineapple in life. He’d talked
openly about suicidal thoughts and when he didn’t turn
up for a scheduled appointment or answer his mobile,
Haslinger became worried.
“I called his work and he wasn’t there either, so I called
the police and asked them to go around to the boarding
house where he was living to check on him. I’ve got one of
those voice-to-text mobiles and the next day I get a text:
‘I’m a wife’. I’m thinking, ‘Why’s my wife sending that?’.
Then I realise, it’s from this guy – ‘I’m alive!’.”
“When I next saw him he gave me a bit of a grief:
‘Thanks for sending the cops around’. But then 15 minutes
after he leaves I get a text: ‘Thanks for caring enough to
send help’.”
BERNIE MITCHELL DRAINS his coffee and attempts to
summarise his life since he put down that knife.
For more than two years afterwards, he relied on
disability payments while undergoing a course of
electroconvulsive therapy (“It didn’t work for me”)
and refining the mood-stabilising, antidepressant and
antipsychotic drug regimen he remains on to this day. Sam
and his family stayed close, “reminding me that the future
I couldn’t see was there. People say snap out of it, but it
took me two years to fully understand my condition. There
is no snapping out of it. It’s a sort of blindness.”
Ultimately he married Sam, built a business, had five
kids, took up scuba diving and wrote a book about living
with bipolar disorder (Bipolar: a path to acceptance). He
also had “about 400 psychotherapy sessions delving into
the broken person you become because of depression, and
looking at what brought you to that place”.
He still has days when three emails is three too many. “I
know it and I just go home.”
Can he put his finger on the one thing that has stopped
him sliding back?
“At the age of 24 I learnt what is important in life. Value
every moment; your family and friends, the breeze on your
face, the smells as you walk down the street. I realised that
long before a lot of others.”
As I digest that, I notice something I hadn’t in the
previous two hours. Mitchell doesn’t wear a watch.
He’s living . . . in the present.
HELP IS AT HAND
Described as a “suicide
prevention tool”, the locally
developed BeyondNow app
enables users to create a
step-by-step plan they can
quickly consult if they’re
considering suicide.
The free app prompts users
to list the following:
WARNING SIGNS:
“feeling like a burden”, “feeling
trapped”, “drinking to cope”,
“conflict with people”
REASONS FOR LIVING:
“experiences I haven’t had yet”,
“a special friend”, “seeing my
children grow up”, “my faith
or spirituality”
WAYS TO MAKE THEIR
ENVIRONMENT SAFE:
“give my medication to
someone else to look after”,
“lock up or get rid of anything
that could be used to harm
myself”, “avoid people who
upset me”, “avoid driving”
THINGS TO DO BY YOURSELF:
“do some exercise”, “play
with a pet”, “be creative”, “see
a movie”
WAYS TO CONNECT WITH
PEOPLE AND PLACES:
“go to a busy park”, “spend
some time in a cafe”, “go to the
library”, “go to a sports match
or concert”
FRIENDS AND FAMILY THEY
CAN TALK TO, AND
PROFESSIONAL SUPPORT.
Ifyouhavebeenaffectedbythisstory,
supportisavailablehere.
Lifeline:131114
SuicideCallBackService:1300659467
Beyondblue:1300224636
ruok.org.au
STATE
OF MIND