School friends remember classmate Nick Munsie lost to suicide

A group of Sydney schoolmates are sacrificing style for substance for the Black Dog Institute’s Mullets for Mental Health campaign, after losing a friend to suicide.

Twin brothers Matthew and Simon Dodds raise money for mental health to honour their friend Nick Munsie, 18, who died from suicide in June. Picture: Nikki Short

Nick Munsie was a country larrikin with a wicked sense of ­humour and a passion for rugby union. But just a few months ­before he was due to finish Year 12 at Sydney’s St Joseph’s College, he took his own life. He was 18.

Now more than 70 of his classmates are putting mental health in the spotlight by taking part in the Black Dog Institute’s Mullets for Mental Health fundraiser, ­already raising almost $200,000 for suicide prevention and ­research.

Organiser Harry Bowden, who boarded with Munsie, said the sudden death of the bright young man in the first week of June, just a week before he was due to return home to Armidale for the school holidays, had devastated the entire school.

“We were shattered,” he said. “A lot of the conversations with my mates have been asking if there was more that we could have done to prevent this. Everyone felt a fair bit guilty about what more we could have done.”

Harry, 17, and his classmates are going the chop with their “Mullets for Munz” campaign to raise funds and promote conversations about mental health in the hopes of preventing more young people from suffering in silence. “There is a big stigma around men keeping quiet and stopping them speaking up, especially country men like Munsie,” he said.

Nick Munsie.

Fellow boarder Hamish Alston, 17, got his haircut to reflect the “business in the front, party at the back”’ ethos of the mullet last week as a way of honouring his friend. He said losing Munsie, who had always worn an “infectious smile” but was reluctant to burden his friends, had ripped a hole in their close-knit group of friends.

“If only he could see just how much we all loved him and miss him,” he said.

Matthew Dodds and twin brother Simon also got out the scissors in their Gladesville backyard as a way of paying tribute to their friend and raising awareness. “It brings it into the light,” Matthew said.

Clinical psychologist and ­ research fellow at the Black Dog ­Institute Melissa Black said Covid-19 had exacerbated the youth mental health crisis in Australia, with about 75 per cent of people reporting the pandemic had a negative impact on their mental health. “There has been a shadow pandemic of mental health from the lockdowns for Covid-19,” she said.

Dr Black said though there were a range of mental health support services available, the Mullets for Mental Health initiative was a powerful form of outreach because it encouraged conversations among the young, with suicide the primary cause of deaths in 15 to 44-year-olds.

Psychiatrist Patrick McGorry, who heads youth mental health service Orygen, said young people were under increasing strain as they faced an uncertain future due to the threat of Covid-19.

Donations can be made at the Black Dog Institute website.

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