Some Days I Question My Work in Mental Health. I Keep Showing Up Anyway.
What my own experience and recent conversations across country Australia keep teaching me about mental health, suicide and the help we ask people to seek.
There are days when I get back in the ute or board a plane after a conversation and sit with a question I can’t easily answer.
Am I making a difference?
I work in mental health and suicide prevention. I share my story, travel to communities, speak in workplaces and sit with people who are carrying things they’ve sometimes never spoken about before. I believe deeply in this work, but that doesn’t protect me from questioning it.
Sometimes it makes the questions harder.
Because you can care, put everything you have into helping and still hear about someone who didn’t receive the support they needed. You can see families doing their best, mates trying to stay close and communities rallying, while someone continues to struggle.
Mental illness and suicide are complex. The longer I work in this space, the more careful I become about suggesting there’s an easy answer.
But I also become more determined to question what we could do better.
I know what it’s like to lose sight of a way forward
Before I was The Unbreakable Farmer, I was a bloke trying to hold together a farm, a family and a future that was becoming harder to picture.
Flood, drought, financial pressure and the breakdown of our family farming business all took their toll. When I walked away from farming, it felt like I’d unclipped my identity and left it on the gate.
I didn’t know who I was without it.
My struggles eventually led to an attempt to take my life. That experience is part of why I do this work, and why I take it personally when people describe feeling trapped, overwhelmed or unsure where they belong.
It doesn’t mean I know exactly how they feel. My story gives me a place to begin listening, but their experience belongs to them.
What I do understand is that when life becomes overwhelming, even something that looks simple from the outside can feel enormous.
Including asking for help.
What are we asking someone to do?
Over the past few months, my work has taken me through Queensland’s Channel Country and Gulf Savannah, and into Victorian communities still dealing with the aftermath of the January bushfires.
Different circumstances, but conversations that keep bringing me back to the effort involved in holding life together.
We tell people to reach out. It’s a message I’ve shared plenty of times myself.
But have we thought enough about what those words ask of someone?
They might be admitting something they’ve been hiding for months. They might be worried about how their family will react, whether their employer will see them differently or whether they’ll be taken seriously.
Then come the practical questions.
Can they get an appointment? Can they get there? Who looks after the kids, the stock or the business? Is there somewhere private to talk over the phone? What happens if the first service they contact can’t help?
When someone is already exhausted, every additional step draws on energy they might barely have.
We need to be curious about those barriers. If someone hasn’t followed up a referral, I want us to ask what got in the way before we assume they weren’t interested in getting better.
Being known doesn’t mean feeling understood
An older bloke spoke to me about loneliness after outliving so many of his brothers and mates.
There were still people around him. What was disappearing were the people who knew his history, remembered the same moments and understood a part of his life without needing it explained.
That stayed with me.
In country towns, we often take comfort in knowing one another. We recognise the ute, know the family name and remember where someone used to work.
But how much do we know about their life now?
Who do they talk to when they’re worried? Who would notice if they started withdrawing? Have we kept inviting them, or started assuming they prefer being on their own?
Familiarity can make us feel closer to someone than we actually are. Sometimes we need to ask another question and be willing to hear an answer we weren’t expecting.
The emergency ends before the strain does
I spoke with a woman who lost everything in the January bushfires. Months later, she was still dealing with what followed.
The fire has a date. The consequences keep turning up.
There are arrangements to chase, decisions to make and routines to rebuild, often while people are still trying to understand what has happened to their lives.
Meanwhile, public attention moves elsewhere.
Imagine having to explain why you’re still struggling when other people believe the hard part should be over.
I’ve also spoken with people worn down by several pressures at once. They might have managed each one separately, but together there’s barely any room to catch their breath.
That’s why I hesitate when I hear country people described as endlessly resilient.
I want to know what it’s costing them to keep going.
Can they admit they’re exhausted? Can they ask for help without feeling they’ve failed? Have we become so accustomed to them managing that we’ve stopped checking?
The people helping need somewhere to turn too
A mate spoke to me about supporting someone after an attempt to take his life.
He wanted to be there, but he was frightened of getting it wrong. What should he say? How often should he ring? How could he tell whether he was helping?
There are people carrying those questions in communities everywhere.
We ask partners, parents, neighbours and workmates to look out for one another. We need to give them opportunities to learn how to listen, respond and help someone connect with appropriate care.
They also need to understand that they don’t have to carry the whole situation themselves.
And in small communities, we need to pay attention to the dependable people everyone leans on. The ones who answer the phone, turn up after a disaster and quietly take on another job because it needs doing.
Who do they call when they’re running out of steam?
Being willing to help doesn’t give someone an unlimited capacity to keep doing it.
We can ask difficult questions without assigning blame
When someone dies by suicide, there can be devastating questions for the people left behind.
I would never want a grieving family or a mate who tried their hardest reading this and believing they should have found a sentence that would have changed everything.
Suicide cannot be reduced to a single conversation, and there are circumstances we may never fully understand.
We can respect that complexity while examining how support could be improved.
Did the person feel heard? Was care accessible? Was the next step clear? What happened between the referral and the appointment? Who followed up?
The people who have struggled to access help have something valuable to tell us. We need to make room for their experience, including when it challenges the way we’ve been doing things.
Capacity Before Crisis needs to mean something on an ordinary day
For me, Capacity Before Crisis means preparing for these moments before someone is overwhelmed.
In a workplace, that means a manager knowing how to respond when an employee says they’re struggling, and having a practical pathway to support.
In a community organisation, it means knowing which services are available, understanding the limits of a volunteer’s role and supporting the people who regularly hear difficult stories.
For those planning and funding services, it means looking at access through the eyes of someone trying to use them.
Sometimes the help a person needs next is someone sitting beside them while they make a call, arranging transport or checking in after an appointment.
Community care matters enormously. Accessible professional services need to be there alongside it. Goodwill can’t be expected to stretch across every gap.
Why I keep showing up
I question this work because I care about what happens to people.
I keep doing it because I’ve seen someone begin to speak honestly, recognise something in themselves or become willing to consider support they’d previously dismissed.
I don’t always know what happens after those moments. But they matter enough for me to keep learning and turning up.
If you’re struggling, you don’t need to explain everything perfectly before seeking help. “I’m having a hard time and I need some help” is enough to begin.
And for the rest of us, I think there’s a question worth taking into our workplaces, organisations and communities:
If someone told us today that they weren’t coping, how would we help them take the next step?
Think about the person, the practical barriers and what happens after the first conversation.
Because encouraging someone to speak up carries a responsibility to listen carefully when they do.
If you need support:
Lifeline: 13 11 14 — available 24/7.
TIACS: Call or text 0488 846 988, Monday–Friday, 8am–10pm AEST.
Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636 — available 24/7.
Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467 — available 24/7.
You can also speak with your GP or a trusted health professional. If accessing help feels overwhelming, consider asking someone you trust to assist with the first step.
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 000.