Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

Each October in our community we eagerly await the Strathalbyn country show. It is a traditional country show with a fierce fruitcake competition and rows of prize sheep and cattle. But, amongst the fairy floss, there was also a show of force from the Strathalbyn and Communities Suicide Prevention Network. The group spent the day promoting mental health by handing out quick guides on how to access help when you need it and working to ensure that we reduce the stigma of suicide. They visited every stall, including mine.

The network adopts a community based approach to mental health and empowers individuals, groups and organisations to look after the mental health and wellbeing of 'their patch', of each other, in our community. As they explained to me, it's about having the right conversations, offering the appropriate support and encouraging our communities to adopt a culture where it's okay to talk—an important message to get across in our rural communities at a time when even earning a living is proving to be a challenge for many of our farming families. Sadly, it is often our young men who find it hardest to speak up and ask for help when they are struggling to cope with the pressures of life. In 2018 suicide accounted for over 43 per cent of all deaths among 15- to 19-year-old young men and almost 40 per cent of males aged 20 to 24 years of age.

As a federal MP, you attend many funerals in your community, showing your support, paying respect and joining your community to say goodbye. Earlier this year I attended a funeral not as an MP but as a friend to a young man, just 19 years of age. I've known him since he was four, when he was at kindy with my eldest son. He was a little blonde Harry Potter. He was bright. He was creative. He had so much to give and live for. But he didn't realise, and it was too much. And now his family will never, ever be the same. I think of him so often and his beautiful, attentive mum, who kept every kindy painting. She adored her son. She will never get to see the man that he should have had time to become. She recently said to me, 'It's an epidemic, Rebekah.' Since the loss of her beautiful boy, she has heard from so many young people who have attempted or thought of suicide and from family members of people who have completed suicide. It is a fear that so many of us as parents face. The vulnerability of our young people is forever real.

I've spoken at great length in this place about the need to improve services available for our young people in rural and regional South Australia, and I will continue to advocate for increased resources to headspace services in Mount Barker and Victor Harbor and the surrounding regions, including Strathalbyn and Kangaroo Island. My community, before I was elected, did not have a single headspace area—no footprint—right across more than 9,000 square kilometres. Headspace is not a panacea for all mental health issues for young people, but it is certainly a start. We must do all we can to equip our young people with the skills they need to navigate life, because the statistics show that they will confront the same if not greater challenges in later life.

ABS data collected from Mindframe shows that, for men, the highest suicide rates occur after the age of 80. In 2017, Monash University reviewed 140 nursing home suicides that occurred between 2000 and 2013 in an attempt to better understand why. The study identified a diagnosis of depression in two-thirds of cases and that two in five experienced loneliness. This is something very real. Over half of men and women in residential care suffer from depression, compared to 15 per cent of individuals who live in the community.

A KPMG report commissioned by Suicide Prevention Australia and released in September this year found that tackling social isolation in aged care is a priority because the statistics are high. But depression is not a normal part of ageing; we need to look at how we are caring for the physical and psychological health of our older Australians. I hope that when we have the interim report from the royal commission it will shed some light for us onto the treatment of mental health in aged care.

I'd just like to close by saying that we're losing too many—too many—of our good young people and older people in our community. It is such a wicked problem that people have such a great sense of loss and a feeling that there is no hope. We must change this, and we can do this in our society.

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