The family of a man who took his own life at Lake Burrumbeet last month have courageously spoken out in an effort to increase awareness of the stigma that still surrounds the subject of mental illness and suicide.
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Julie Allan and two of her sons, Connor and Brayden, said it was an incredibly difficult decision to come forward and speak but they had lived too long with this burden and wanted more awareness so that the loss of their beloved husband and father would not be in vain.
At 9.30am on August 13, on his 52nd birthday, Mark Allan was found in a car on the southern shores at Lake Burrumbeet.
It was the culmination of years of battling severe depression and three previous suicide attempts.
Left behind were his wife of almost 30 years, their four sons and a host of family and friends who, variously over the years, had tried to help him.
Mrs Allan said more than anything she wants “more education, more awareness to stop the stigma about mental health.”
“It is an illness like any other, but the difference is you can’t see it. People just accept cancer as an illness but this was Mark’s cancer
“People can’t help it, so we need to stop feeling ashamed of being ill,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be something that people have to be ashamed about or not talk about.”
“We need more education around this because there’s a lack of understanding and people don’t know what to say, so they don’t say anything.”
Asked how the family was coping, Connor, 17, said, “We are slowly getting there, just taking a day at a time, one foot at a time. We still have our ups and downs.”
“It seems surreal,” Mrs Allan said. “At first there’s the trauma and the shock, you kind of keep going because there’s the funeral to organise and things like that, but then you get back to work or life and then, well for me, it hits again.”
For Brayden, 25, it is not the big milestones, it’s the every day absence of their father he feels the most.
“You try to go back to normality and then you realise normal it is not what it was,” he said.
“You can prepare for and brace yourself for the big things like Father’s day, but it’s the going home and Dad not being there, the little things that keep popping up … the things Dad used to love doing or when his footy team is doing well and he’s not there to tell.
“Little, unexpected things bring back memories of him and then you think of the things you miss or that you wish you’d done,” Brayden said.
Mrs Allan is particularly grateful to St Patrick’s College and the help and support given, both through the Chris Yeung Fund and from the school community.
She said in 2016, when Mark had been in hospital following an earlier suicide attempt, St Patrick’s had contacted her about a fund that had been set up to help the families of fathers suffering with mental illness and they wanted to know if they could put her name forward.
“I remember just standing in the passage way of the hospital and all I could do was cry … it was such an overwhelming time and going through all this, you just feel so alone and then to hear that there’s someone there to help; it was such a relief.”
Chris Yeung Fund Chairman Simon Dwyer said the committee wanted to help but it was a new scenario for them as well.
Mrs Allan said all four boys had attended St Pat’s but Connor was the only one still at school then.
“It was such a topsy turvy time for us and finances were such a big issue with Mark down, I didn’t know how I was going to afford the school fees. Connor was in Year 9 then, so for someone to take that stress away was huge,” she said.
Going forward the Chris Yeung Fund has helped with school fees to enable Connor to stay at school.
Connor, now in Year 11, said “When this huge thing happened to Dad, it was a big relief to be able to stay at school. I was worried about, with only one parent working, how we were going to pay for all these huge costs so to not have to worry if I would have to leave school was a huge relief.”
“It is ironic,” Mr Dwyer said, “because the fund was set up to help fathers with mental health issues because the dads don’t want their sons to be the collateral damage of what’s happening to them, but it’s the poor Mums who end up making all the decisions, so we are adding support and helping the Julies of the world.”
Connor wants to go on and gain an apprenticeship and is particularly interested in becoming a carpenter.
Brayden said it was relief to know his Mum had help and for Connor not to have to go to a new school, because then he wouldn’t have had that safety net of his friends.”
He said he loved his time at St Pat’s and Mrs Allan agrees, “It is such a great community (the school) and it is so important to feel you belong somewhere.”
Brayden said when his father first attempted suicide, he found he couldn’t talk about it with his friends.”I was living a lie and it eats away at you.”
He said the societal viewpoint was changing and improving, “I remember not being able to talk about it but now wish I had those conversations a lot earlier.”
Mrs Allan agrees the silence and stigma around mental illness is isolating.
“During all those years with Mark’s illness, I never talked about it because you just want to be normal and I didn’t want Mark to be looked at differently,” she said.
“The illness caused him to be a different person and my family naturally wanted to protect me, so I just wouldn’t tell them, I would just stay in the silence and it is just so isolating.”
Connor says he only talked about his dad with a few friends.
“There were only a few that knew and even then they didn’t know the full story.”
“I was never able to fully express my feelings or tell them fully what was going on because I was just thought they’d see me differently, they’d treat me differently,’ Connor said.
Mr Dwyer said Mark changed the way they had planned to operate the Fund.
“Mark was different. Mark was special. He reached out and I didn’t expect that. In December 2017, he said he wanted to share his story and that totally changed our (the Old Collegians) perspective,” Mr Dwyer said.
“At a golf event in March this year, Mark spoke about his journey and told the golfers how the money they’d contributed had helped him and his family.”
“We can’t know how many people Mark’s messages may have saved and we can’t quantify how many people his story may have saved, and that’s his gift.”
“The Fund has changed … and for the better, I would say. Instead of just rubber stamping we are open to those conversations with the next families as well,” Mr Dwyer said.
”Nobody has all the answers,” Mrs Allan said, “but if we can open it up so that there is more discussion, more talk, then there may be more understanding and it may help others.”
- Lifeline Australia Crisis Support and Suicide Prevention: 13 11 14