It's time for action: do something to help

Abstract

IN 1997, while I was the Premier of Victoria, I was challenged by my daughter to do something to stop young country men dying on our roads. Further investigation of the two deaths that caused my daughter to cry out her challenge found that, while both young men?s deaths were recorded as road fatalities, both men were depressed and had used their motor vehicles to take their own lives. Hence began a journey that led me to consider better suicide prevention programs ? until I realised suicide prevention programs were too late in the process. Talking about mental illness was rejected by most of the community, but the word depression had a much wider acceptance. My advocacy for a national body to destigmatise depression took shape in July 2000 when I became the Inaugural Chairman of The National Depression Initiative, which became beyondblue.