‘Not enough people get help’
I met a young man a few years ago, a student at the time, who had started to turn his life around and was enjoying and attending school regularly.
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On the outside, he was a healthy teenager who just had some trouble engaging at school, I didn’t recognise the pain he was starting to suffer. This young person moved away from our services at Youth Off The Streets and to another city.
Gradually he became overwhelmed by an intense internal trauma, he fell into abusing alcohol and committed suicide one night when he was drunk.
I attended this young mans funeral soon after he died and heard the most gut-wrenching story from the father’s partner: the boy had also lost three of his brothers to suicide. October is mental health month and this year we are asked to share the journey for better mental health and wellbeing.
What I want to share with you is one of the reasons I think we should take mental health so seriously. These days mental health issues are far too common, particularly in young people. Issues of anxiety, depression, schizophrenia and many more plague some of our most vulnerable people.
Sadly not enough people get help with these issues which often extend from some form of abuse, and those that don’t get help addressing their health often go on to suffer from further disadvantage, a life of crime or spiral downwards into alcohol and other drug abuse.
It can be easy to tell when someone is not physically healthy and it can be easy to miss signs that someone you care about is struggling, but we need to take those extra steps to help our friends, family, colleagues and anyone else in your life.
Father Chris Riley
CEO and Founder at Youth Off The Streets
Teacher support
I am a founding member of The Bullied Teachers Support Network. We support teachers, ex-teachers, staff and ex-staff of the NSW Department of Education who are being Bullied at work or who have been bullied at work in our Public School system.
If there are any staff of the NSW Department of Education in the Southern Highlands who are being bullied or who have been bullied, they can contact our Network for support. Our Network can be contacted via our Public Facebook Page (The Bullied Teachers Support Network) or via email to teachersfirstau@gmail.com
Staff should note that our Public Facebook page is now being monitored by the NSW Department of Education so please be careful regarding what you post on Facebook. This is a genuine letter because Staff of the NSW Department of Education who have been bullied need support in many ways.
Paul Johnson
Bullied Teachers Support Network
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