Movember: Aussie men talk men’s health

Dan Price doesn’t remember a lot about the day he stood at the edge of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ready to jump.

Dan Price doesn’t remember a lot about the day he stood at the edge of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, ready to jump. But four years later he can still recall the words of the police officer who talked him off the ledge.

“He said, ‘mate, it doesn’t matter what you’re going through. We can get help, you don’t need to do what you think you need to do. There’s help out there for you’,” Mr Price said.

Price and the police officer, constable Arun Trevitt, are now good mates and regularly catch up over lunch at the pub.

Police officer Arun Trevitt received a Pride of Australia award for helping prevent Dan Price from jumping off the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Picture: Toby Zerna

“We’ll flip each other a message or have a good half-hour chat … he’s proud of me, and he tells me that often. He respects me as a man, and a human being,” Mr Price said.

The 33-year-old, who now has a seven-week old daughter, Tallulah, with his partner, Sarah, is part of a growing army of young Australian men who are prepared to go public about their battles with mental health.

He says the Movember movement — a men’s health foundation that promotes fund raising with a mix of humour and 70s moustache stylings — has been a remarkably effective way to reach men in crisis as well as raise funds for prostate and testicular cancer research and mental health and suicide prevention.

Last year, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistic, 3,128 people died from intentional self-harm in Australia. Men take their own lives at a rate more than three times higher than women. Suicide rates have continued to rise over the past decade despite an increased focus on advocacy and awareness.

Movember ambassadors Dan Price, Mark Kelly, Jonathan Leeming and Roshan Karu, with barber Dale Neal at Barberhood barber shop in Sydney. Picture: James Croucher

Jonathan Leeming, 37, originally from Buckinghamshire in the UK, admits the handlebar moustache he grows every November to mark Movember looks “ridiculous”, but it gets people talking.

Mr Leeming, who works for Suicide Prevention Australia, became a ‘Mo-Bro’ eight years ago. He had been affected by both testicular cancer and had suicidal thoughts from the age of 14.

Movember’s catchphrases, like ‘know thy nuts’, he says, make it so much easier for men like him to talk their experience of having a testicle removed.

“If someone made a comment that referred to balls I’d say ‘no just the one’ and that kind of opens up the conversation, a dialogue — I welcome that,” Mr Leeming said.

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