Are You Bogged Mate? founder Mary O'Brien visits Albury to address CWA

The founder of Are You Bogged Mate?, an initiative to help men in regional areas with dire mental straits, travels around the country talking to men and women to break down the stigma around suicide and depression.

Many regional blokes face tough challenges, she said, particularly in times of natural disasters.

But family law court-related issues rated as the "number one cause of suicide" among rural males.

"Some areas certainly have peaks and troughs in the issues and I think each area has its own unique problems, whether that is fires, natural disasters, but it's relationship problems that really hits rural men hard," she said.

"We talk to police, firies, ambos, also military men, so Vietnam veterans, long-haul trucking companies, so it's expanded out to include a lot more men.

"I think the problem that's probably the most common across Australia is family law court issues in relation to family and relationship breakdowns.

"The main drivers that the experts list off for male suicide would be relationship breakdowns, child access issues or child custody issues, financial issues, and pending legal matters."

Ms O'Brien is based at Dalby in southern Queensland, a place where she had an epiphany when two men in the three weeks leading to Christmas in 2017 turned to suicide.

She is in the Border region to address the Murray Group Country Women's Association at the Albury branch to thank them for donating to her cause.

Her visit coincided with the AGM and 60^th birthday of the Murray Group CWA.

"My work in agricultural extension was taking me around the country in 2017, but I didn't really know anything about mental health and so I decided to investigate it a little bit," she told The Border Mail.

"I found the statistics which are pretty horrific in that 75 per cent of suicides in Australia are male and that rural men are twice as likely to take their life as metropolitan men.

"I grew up in a rural area, lived and worked with rural men, so communicating with them is probably one of my key skill sets.

"There's no fluffy stuff, I strip it all away, I use bloke-speak, I don't use any psychology words, because I don't know any. I keep it simple and and that's not because they're not intelligent, they are, but they're also practical."

Ms O'Brien said she used analogies - such as the name of her initiative - "that make sense to men, rather than theories and stuff".

"We can get ourselves through those sticky patches, bogged down, but sometimes we actually have to ask for help and that's not always easy to do," she said.

"But it doesn't matter how badly broke the machine is, I've never seen anyone get out, just throw a match to it and set fire to it, saying 'that's too hard'.

"We always take the time and trouble to get that machine out because it's high value.

"One of the questions I often ask blokes is, in your business, what's the most valuable asset you have? And they might say the header, or the tractor or the bull - but it's actually you, you're the most valuable asset."

A manual or handouts were not the answer, Ms O'Brien said, using another analogy of learning how to operate machinery.

"They're the sort of blokes that, we don't give them a manual to teach them how to drive a tractor, we show them, and that's how they take information in, not from reading," she said.

"Men do approach us because they don't want to talk to the mainstream services, because they don't understand them."

Ms O'Brien said the CWA had been "overwhelmingly supportive" of Are You Bogged Mate?

"We use that money to put towards running out a 'bogged brakes' program which we just started back in August as a pilot project," she said.

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