Brett Schatto’s incredible story of loss, grief and resilience – as mental health worsens in SA

Brett Schatto has lived through extraordinary loss and knows about using resilience. He says adopting that mindset will help people get through the pandemic.

Brett Schatto has often been told “if only we could bottle your resilience; it must be in your brain DNA”.

Somehow, he’s not only survived several significant life hurdles, including the sudden death of his nine-year-old son, but is helping others find peace in their darkest hours.

Mr Schatto believes resilience is self-taught and has a lot to do with perspective. He says it's a mind-shift that many South Australians are having to adopt in order to negotiate the uncertainty of life during a pandemic.

“Resilience and being able to cope with what life throws at you, I have found, is being able to identify how could things have been worse and being grateful that it is not,” says the Adelaide financial adviser and father of three.

Mr Schatto’s son, Jordan, was killed crossing the road in 2001 while delivering his 10th birthday party invites to neighbours.

Brett Schatto, with a portrait of his son Jordan, who died just before his 10th birthday crossing the road in 2001. Picture: Emma Brasier

“I struggled with Jordan’s death – at the time, there was nothing worse,” he says.

“But looking back, what could have been worse for me was seeing Jordan die slowly through a long terminal illness. It isn’t a lot different but strangely it gave me a slight bit of comfort.”

A year before Jordan’s death, Mr Schatto left an 11-year career as a police officer, which was cut short after he was assaulted on duty. The king-hit knocked him unconscious for 30 minutes and was later linked to brain scarring, which caused ongoing epileptic seizures.

In 2010, he gave the eulogy at his business partner’s funeral after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer while pregnant.

Five years later, Mr Schatto’s 13-year-old son, Connor, was diagnosed with primary sclerosing cholangitis, a long-term progressive disease that can lead to liver disease and failure. Connor underwent lifesaving surgery and is likely to need a liver transplant.

Two weeks earlier, Mr Schatto had buried his father who had succumbed to prostate cancer.

He’s now drawing on his experience to help others.

Every three months, he visits the Mary Potter Hospice, in North Adelaide, to provide free financial advice to terminally ill patients.

“I tell them that they need to consider their terminal illness as a positive and live every day like it’s their last because they get to see their mortality and can plan for it, compared to people who will die suddenly today who will not be ready, will not have said their goodbyes, nor got their finances in order,” he says.

Brett’s helped one cancer patient locate almost $1 million in life insurance across several superannuation funds he didn’t realise he had. The man was able to set up his wife debt-free before he died.

“We often get caught up in our own grief and lament ‘woe is me’, but there is always someone worse off and that’s how we need to think.”

Mental health distress higher now than in lockdown

Thousands of South Australians still feel significant emotional troubles in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, an official survey shows.

New data reveals distress levels are higher than during lockdown last year and comes as a pivotal workshop to urgently address the state’s broken mental health system is held in Adelaide on Wednesday.

State Government researchers found up to a quarter of adults reported suffering “psychological distress” in the first three months of this year. The peak level of distress, in February, was 2.3 per cent higher than in April last year, when SA was in lockdown.

The SA Population Health Survey, of about 1000 people, found almost a third had “poor overall” wellbeing in February.

Last month, 27.7 per cent of those surveyed reported at least one mental health condition. At the height of the pandemic’s first lockdown, 27.8 per cent of respondents reported low wellbeing.

The Wellbeing SA survey, which first asked COVID-19 questions last year, has fluctuated over the past year as SA Health comes under increasing fire over its mental health policies and funding.

Labor health spokesman Chris Picton said the data showed no signs of improvement and that the mental health crisis emerging from the pandemic needed urgent addressing.

“Many people may be shocked that the level of distress is higher this year than during lockdown, but it will be no surprise to our health practitioners who are under pressure every day,” he said.

Health Minister Stephen Wade said the government was actively responding to the mental health impacts of COVID, including $15 million in increased pandemic-related funding for mental health programs from March last year. He noted that psychological distress in March was close to pre-pandemic levels in 2019.

Mr Wade has set up Wednesday’s mental health workshop in response to demands for urgent government action over surging demand, understaffing, underfunding, bed shortages and a “dysfunctional” system that needs short and long term reform to cope with life after COVID.

Wellbeing SA chief executive Lyn Dean said traumas and natural disasters have a long term effect on people’s mental health and providing support and care was complex and required agile responses.

Ms Dean said while the state’s mental health and wellbeing levels have remained the same, SA was doing better than anticipated.

Originally published as Brett Schatto’s incredible story of loss, grief and resilience – as mental health worsens in SA