You Can't Coach That

Sunday, July 15, 2007

The captain of the Australian Rugby League football team is struck down by a season ending knee injury. The fortunes of his club the Brisbane Broncos are likely to suffer in the second half of the season as they strive to defend the premiership they won last season.

A former club mate of the Australian captain and a former junior international representative for New Zealand takes his own life three weeks short of his 22nd birthday. Team mates describe him as the life of the party and say there was no indication of what was to come.

Kind of puts life and its troubles into perspective doesn’t it.

I applaud my local newspaper for running a two page story on this today (one of the only times I have appreciated much of what is written in the popular press lately).

Suicide claims more lives every year in Australia than road accidents. Governments spend millions of dollars on high profile initiatives to combat the road toll. In fact, as I write this I am watching a TV ad on the subject with the slogan “Enough is Enough”. This is a relatively safe problem to take on. After all if the road toll does not fall (and it won’t given the ever-increasing numbers of cars on the road) it can be blamed on motorists who fail to heed the much publicized warnings.

Mental health is a much more challenging problem to deal with. It is as neglected as the rest of our crumbling health system. I can recall several “road safety initiatives” being announced in the past year or so. I don’t recall similar initiatives in the area of mental health.

Suicide kills more Australians every year than road accidents. Males outnumber females in this statistic by 4 to 1. We need to take care of each other.

“You can’t coach that”