For Jonathen’s mother Ryrie, the mental health struggles became noticeable when Jonethen was at school, a reality too often dismissed by his teachers and doctors, who quickly signposted Jonathen as just another “naughty boy”. “There were signs, but there was nowhere to go,” Ryrie recalls. “GPs were not trained to pick up depression in young, articulate males.”
Ryrie, Jonathen’s mum (left) and Nicola, Jonathen’s daughter (right).
Ryrie says the stigma men face expressing mental health challenges meant that Jonathen did not feel comfortable saying he was unhappy, or that something was wrong. “He turned himself inside out trying not to show any weakness,” she says.
Despite recent pushes to change these harmful stereotypes, social pressures for men stubbornly remain. In research conducted as part of Movember’s new Real Face of Men’s Health report, nearly two out of every three men agreed that gender stereotypes affected their health behaviours and experiences in healthcare settings.
“I think men can tend to create and reinforce their own expectations about what it means to be a man, and a leader and provider,” says Jonathen’s nephew Matt. “It can be pretty lonely and can become overwhelming.”
It makes navigating the health care system — an already difficult undertaking for someone with poor mental health — even more challenging.
“Men have particular needs, and I don’t think that those needs are necessarily understood,” says Jacqui. “And when you look at it with the overlay of that cultural influence around what it is to be a man, then that makes it enormously difficult for people to get the right kind of assistance.”
Jonathen (left) and Jacqui, Jonathen’s sister (right) at Jacqui’s wedding.
Additional research commissioned for the Real Face of Men’s Health report confirms this. Our current health care system often fails men when they do access help: with over half of the male respondents reporting one or more barriers to effective engagement with healthcare providers, and 42 per cent believing that men’s health isn’t taken as seriously as women’s.
Across his adult life, there were opportunities where, if adequately designed and equipped, our health care system could have intervened and addressed the underlying issues shaping Jonathen’s health. Unfortunately, the absence of appropriate support had devastating consequences for Jonathen, who withdrew himself from his family and sadly, started finding connection through self-medication and criminal activity. Where a health intervention was badly needed, only a justice response was applied.
“I think if we had the ability back in the day for early intervention for Jonathen, rather than anger because he was misbehaving, it might’ve made a big difference in his ability to deal with life,” says Ryrie.
Nicola, who says she studied mental health and addiction to better understand her late father, agrees that early intervention is key.
“We can see the effects of males in particular who have had early intervention versus not having it,” Nicola says. “We need to be talking about mental health more at an early age, showing men that it is not weak to speak [up], and setting them up with the tools that they need to either pass onto someone in need or use for themselves.”
Jonathen’s niece Kate often finds herself reflecting on how tailored support might have helped her uncle. Kate is a lawyer who works in a community legal centre that provides legal advice to young people and conducts suicide prevention training to equip their staff to help them respond to all of the potential needs of their clients.
“I can’t not think of John when I do that training,” Kate says. “What if he just had connected with a service who had this training? Or someone who just had these skills, where they could have spoken to him and connected him with the right service?”
The cog in the wheel
In sharing her experience of losing her only brother, Jacqui hopes it will put the “cog in the spinning wheel” of someone contemplating suicide.
“Then my next hope, my next very deep hope, is that the person you do talk to is able to reassure you that life is worth living,” she says. “That there are people that so love you, and who are just going to be so impacted by you not being here.”
Jacqui, Jonathen’s sister (left) and Jonathen (right).
“Men across the country continue to die too young and from largely from preventable causes, so the urgent need for system reform is clear. We need a healthcare system that can respond to men in all their diversities and needs” says Jeremy Phillips-Yelland, Movember’s director of policy & advocacy (ANZ).
”Our Real Face of Men’s Health report outlines the state of men’s health across Australia and makes clear the benefits that would ripple through relationships, families, and communities if we invest in improving men’s health. That is why the Movember Institute of Men’s Health is looking to work with Australia’s governments to improve men’s health. In doing so, it won’t just benefit men, it will have a profoundly positive impact across society. Healthier men means a healthier world.”
The impact on Jonathen’s family is hard to overstate. It’s rippled through four generations of family and continues to shape their everyday life. For Nicola, it is most profoundly felt when she observes other people sharing big moments with their fathers.
“Some days, I don’t think about it. Other days, I will watch my friends get married and have their dads walk them down the aisle and do the daddy daughter dance,” she says. “Certain experiences that most people get with their dad, I won’t be able to.”
Nicola, Ryrie, Jacqui, Matt, Kate and all Jonathen’s loved ones continue to miss his company, each and every day. Their wish is that by sharing Jonathen’s story, it may inspire more urgent action, helping to make stories like Jonathen’s a thing of the past. If she could reach him now, Ryrie says, she hopes Jonathen would know how greatly loved he was, adding: “His death was not better than his life.”
Jacqui, Jonathen’s sister (left) and Ryrie, Jonathen’s mum (right).
If men’s health matters to you, and you want to see more government action on men’s health issues, join Movember’s petition today at movember.com/realface and be part of the solution.
