Radio Australia Today Editorial

Depression. The depressing truth.

13 June 2008

This morning we spoke with a man who is riding his motorbike around Australia to raise awareness about youth depression. In the western world at the moment youth suicide is increasing, but people don’t seem to be talking about the depression that leads to it.

Joe Campbell is jumping on his BMW and is taking himself to country towns around the Australia to talk to people. The problem here in Australia, he says, is that men don’t like to talk about their problems. If they feel down, they believe that admitting to this will mean they are being wimps, woozes and sooks.

So these self-contained young men keep it all inside, and spiral into a depression pit that ends in self-harm.

13,000 kilometres Joe is doing on his bike to get his message across. But the sad thing is that much of the local media here in Australia is not covering his journey. They say that they fear depressed people will commit suicide if the issue is brought to public light.

This is nonsense of course. Letting people know that they are not alone, and that others care about them, is never a bad thing. The truth is that these media outlets probably don’t want to do something as serious as suicide, and are offering up this moral high ground excuse to avoid having to do the story.

The fact is that you are not alone. There are places that you can check on the web if you are feeling down:

http://inspire.org.au/

and if you are a school age person:

http://reachout.com.au/home.asp

These sites show that if you are feeling really bad, there are ways of making yourself feel better. I know a few people who went to confidential counsellors after deaths in their families, and were told that the blues they were feeling were normal for the circumstances. They immediately felt better, just knowing that there was nothing wrong with them.

The bottom line is, you are not alone, and you can feel better. So do something about it, eh?

– Phil