Talk About It Tuesday is a Cape crusade
Suicide Support Group
There is never a shortage of colour going up the Cape York track to The Tip, with each roadside stop, town and station destination “branded” with tourist-attracting clothing delights.
But swing through Coen on a Tuesday and you will likely see yellow dominating the clothing choice of the locals.
It is for a great cause with humble but heartbreaking beginnings.
Talk About It Tuesday is an initiative to keep focus on the issues of mental health on the Cape and to push for improved services and awareness of suicide.
Started by mums Deb Jackson and Jackie Perry, who both lost sons to suicide, Talk About It Tuesday has paved a way on not just the Cape for families and communities grappling with the grief, anger and frustration of a disproportionally high rate of deaths by suicide across the region, but for more than 1600 Facebook followers around the country.
Both women lost their sons - Deb’s Dillon, 18, and Jackie’s Daniel, 37 - on Tuesdays, with other suicide deaths in the region also taking place on a Tuesday. Much of the community in Coen wears a yellow shirt on a Tuesday as a show of support for those in the community touched by mental health issues.
Deb is accustomed to supporting people across the Cape. She lives on a cattle property 40km north of Coen and runs “Ups and Downs” providing accommodation to workers in the area and some tourism, and her door is always open.
“We don’t have any doors, in any case, and that’s the way we like it… our home is open,’’ she said of her open air kitchen and living space.
After her son took his own life around 10 years ago, Deb set about running Conquer the Corrugations, an annual walk on the dirt roads between Coen and Archer River. It is an event which now attracts up to 300 walkers.
“We did Conquer the Corrugations once a year, but I found it was the only time that I could talk freely about Dillon,’’ Deb said.
“Jackie came up with the idea to do Talk About It Tuesday.
“I had joined a few groups on Facebook but we have so much suicide in our area on the Cape, there was nowhere for them to go, so we started Talk About It Tuesday.
“We started off with Jackie and I telling our stories and how we felt. It is about breaking the stigma. We now have men coming on and telling how they feel, which is a huge thing.’’
Jackie, a life-long Coen resident lost her mine worker son, Daniel, to suicide around three years ago. It was that loss, and Jackie’s concern for her community about a lack of services to support people with mental health challenges and families trying to cope with the grief, that has driven Talk About It Tuesday over the past two years.
“Suicide grief is pretty hard and tough going and you get all of these different emotions of grief and guilt and regret and it’s just having someone there to say ‘this is all normal, you’re going to feel those things’, it really helps,’’ Jackie said.
“And it breaks that stigma talking about feelings, especially for men, it’s really hard for them to open up and talk about feelings.
“We often have people that will private message just to talk about things and connect with us. We are also trying to get out through my two daughters Jess and Clare have started up a little podcast, Talk About It Tuesday Picking Up The Pieces, and they are pretty determined to do something about breaking down the stigma.’’
And support across the Cape is flowing for the valuable organisation, with rodeos in Coen promoting it as their cause of choice, giving opportunity for Deb and Jackie and their supporters to distribute information on suicide prevention.
“There’s a lot of information on Beyond Blue and Black Dog Institute, but our thinking is that we need something that is simple and has pictures of people and places that are in our area. We want to localise it,’’ Jackie said.
“We’re collecting stories for an anxiety booklet… local stories. If we want to get to Cape York people we need to use our own people.’’
Other support has come from Rio Tinto with mining machinery at Weipa where Daniel worked painted in the Talk About It Tuesday colours and measures in place to support worker mental health, along with some funding flowing from Qantas to support projects.
You can learn more about the organisation by visiting its Facebook page: Talk About It Tuesday.
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