Suicide: Australian suicide and mental health register launched to aid those in need
Nine years ago a struggling Joe Williams attempted to take his life. Now a new national suicide monitoring system is hoping others don’t fall into the same dark place as the former NRL star.
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Consumed by suicidal thoughts and desperate for the pain to go away, former NRL player and boxer Joe Williams attempted to take his own life at just 28 years of age.
Nine years on, he is happily engaged and an avid mental health campaigner hoping to end the stigma around suicide.
The Wiradjuri man and former Penrith and South Sydney halfback was riddled with suicidal thoughts after a devastating concussion at just 13.
“I have struggled with suicidal ideation since I was a teenager. Since the concussion, there was a dialogue in my head that was negative and told me to end my life,” he said.
At the time, he was a rising rugby league star grappling with the pressures of coming of age and being an Indigenous man.
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“I went through the journey of living in the country, growing up Aboriginal and then moving to the city and finding alcohol and drugs and developing an addiction issue, to silence what was going through my head,” he said.
“I didn’t know who I was. As an Aboriginal boy, I was too white to be black and too black to be white, so I had issues with who I was as a person.”
A new national register of suicide and self-harm data launched yesterday has been deemed a crucial step in preventing more Australians from falling into the rabbit hole of self-harm like Williams.
Mental health advocate Ingrid Ozols said the register will help improve early intervention for at-risk demographics.
“With this picture we can inform our policies and the services we need,” she said.