Men's Mental Health Blog

What does it mean to be resilient? Growing up, I was a pretty ambitious kind of kid. By the age of 21, I had finished high school, earned a Certificate III in Geoscience, worked in the Mines, worked on the oil rigs, was a volunteer firefighter for the Country Fire Service, had joined the army and had risen to the ranks of Special Forces. I knew what I wanted, and I always went for it. I look back and I can see that younger version of me…with a fuel tank full of optimism and a

Some wounds do not show up on a scan. After two tours of Afghanistan as a Special Operations Engineer, I came home looking fine and feeling anything but. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder does not announce itself. It moves in slowly. The nightmares. The flashbacks that arrive in a supermarket aisle. The guilt about the mates who did not come home, and the strange shame of being the one who did. For a long time I did what a lot of veterans do. I blamed everything except what had

People sometimes ask how a Special Forces engineer ends up standing in front of a room talking about mental health. The short answer is that I nearly did not make it here. The longer answer is this post. The short version I served as a Special Operations Engineer with the Australian Special Forces and deployed twice to Afghanistan. I came home with PTSD and major depression, and my twenties became a fight to justify each morning. Today I speak, mentor and advocate, because as