Last week I found myself sitting in an auditorium with tears freely falling from my face as I watched a formidable feature on male suicide in rural Australia.

It was a new documentary called When the Dust Settles, produced by The Outback Mind Foundation.

I knew it was going to be a hard watch.

But, I knew I shouldn’t avoid it because of that.

In fact, Lifeline states that suicide is the leading cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 44, and being the mother to three sons inside that age range, that is the exact reason I should have watched it.

While not an epidemic exclusive to males, they are overrepresented in the statistics, making up more than 75 per cent of all deaths by suicide in our country.

With around nine Australians dying in this gut-wrenchingly lonely way each day, I feel like it would be difficult to find someone who hasn’t been affected either closely or by six or less degrees of separation.

A friend struggled with suicidal ideation for years.

Help for him wasn’t easy to access, and my own unregulated nervous system that ensued after mounting concern during every one of his spirals, every unanswered phone call, every defeated goodbye as he tried to convince me the world would be better without him in it, was tricky to navigate.

The load wouldn’t have been relieved had he gone through with it, like he imagined.

Life would have gotten harder.

Thankfully he weathered the storm and experiences more sunny days than dark ones now.

I once had a housemate whose sister, and also her best friend, took her own life.

She had been a successful young professional; intelligent, witty, popular, and so loved by and loving to her family and friends.

She was always the life of the party; loved a BNS ball, loved a pub meal, loved a campout.

No-one saw her internal struggle and no-one could have predicted what happened.

It changed my housemate.

Twenty years on and I’ve still not seen a glimpse of who she used to be before that day.

When the Dust Settles focuses on the fallout a couple of families will face for ever after losing loved ones in this deeply distressing manner.

With that kind of fair-dinkum realism residents of the Australian bush are known for, the grieving screen subjects give honest accounts of life for them before and after.

They talk about not seeing signs, or dismissing them.

They talk about their shock, pain, guilt, helplessness, fear and devastation, and they talk about hope.

It was heartbreaking and raw, relatable and reverent.

But for all the tears it provoked, I found myself smiling just as much as I sat there watching.

What these intensely resilient people were driven to do in the wake of the untimely deaths of their loved ones was brave and inspiring.

Just to pick yourself up and carry on is admirable, but to turn your pain into fuel to raise awareness and funding, and get people talking to save another family from heartache like their own, is next level courage.

The founders of The Outback Mind and Emergent Leaders foundations, Aaron Schultz and James Greenshields, brought the presentation to Shepparton, after Aaron had already screened it in several places from Perth to Mt Isa in the month since its premiere.

Both men have struggled with their vitality — a term James prefers to use over ‘mental health’ — and spoke authentically before and after the screening, where they were also joined by international cycling legend and Olympic gold medallist Shepparton’s Brett Lancaster, who touched on his own battles.

The discussion was opened to the small but invested audience, which included Shepp’s own men’s mental health group facilitators Dale Wright and Kevin Sidebottom and a handful of their warriors, some educators, mental health professionals and a football league representative.

It would have been great to see more HR staff from workplaces, more sports club representatives, school and university wellbeing teams, councillors, members of parliament — all those people who can get the message out to the wider community — but perhaps they’ll engage Aaron to screen the feature privately for their own organisations and workplace once word gets around about its power.

Some of us have the freedom to shut things out of our minds to protect them when we need to, but others don’t have the privilege of ignoring the realities they’re living, such as war, hunger, poverty, homelessness, addiction, assault and mental health conditions.

Lifeline admits it doesn’t have an exact number, but says that estimates suggest more than 54,000 Australians may attempt suicide each year, and one in six of us have experienced suicidal thoughts or behaviours in our lifetime, including 3.3 per cent of us in the past 12 months.

So, sure, we live in a lucky country that doesn’t yet have war on our doorstep.

While they need more funding, we have wonderful established organisations such as Foodshare and Beyond Housing feeding our hungry and finding beds for our unsheltered.

But some of the other prevalent issues we have remain largely unseen while the battles rage silently inside our men and women, who don’t know where to go for help or won’t reach for it through shame caused by stigma.

When the dust settles, things don’t just go back to normal.

There’s another layer.

Whether that’s made of trauma or armour depends on whether the battle was won or lost.

With more of us enlisting to help, we’ve all got a better chance of a more positive outcome.

Seymour Telegraph Google News Panels

Sunday, 10th October 2027

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