Check in on a mate, urges former AFl star Dale Thomas
Former AFL player Dale ‘Daisy’ Thomas has spoken about the men’s health crisis ‘gripping Australia’ in the Rush Hour podcast with James Brayshaw and Billy Brownless.
Following the recent deaths of Troy Selwood and Adam Hunter, as well as Essendon VFL senior coach Dale Tapping (who died after a battle with cancer), Thomas called on men to check in on their mates.
“In 2023 2,419 men committed suicide. 46.5 lives lost per week … over three-quarters of all suicides throughout 2023 were male,” he said. “The rates are highest among middle-aged men and older males.That’s us, that’s our audience.”
“If you think you need to check in on a mate, do it.” Daisy said he had had issues with mental health and anxiety, and took medication for it every day. He sees a therapist regularly, “to continue to stay on top of these things and to work through any issues that I have or present.”
He said a lot of his trauma stemmed from a volatile childhood.
“These things bubble away under the surface. I was lucky that I had football to hyper focus on. That was my distraction. It wasn’t until football became an issue – for swapping clubs, criticism – it was the lid on all of this shit bubbling away below. As soon as that lid was off, Pandora’s box.”
At the age of 30 Thomas tried to figure out his life, never confiding in his teammates. “Mental health is something that happens a lot in the background.” A lot of people saw him as a happy-go-lucky guy, which he is. “But there are just times when mental health, for whatever reason, gets the better of me. Anxiety, that feeling down and low for no real reason and the confusion that comes with that, and not knowing how to work through it.”
Thomas says there will be many people listening to his words who think, ‘that’s not me’, however he encourages them to think about someone in their life who it might resonate with. “People who tend to have these symptoms, they’re very good at hiding it. So maybe reach out.”
“Reach out. Reach out to your mates, reach out to your brothers. It’s dads, it’s partners, it’s mates, it’s husbands, it’s uncles … the effects when somebody takes a life are so broad and hit so many people.”
“If you are somebody who is having some tough times, please reach out to somebody. And if you think you need to check in on a mate, do it. Send a text, make a call, make a time to catch up. You never know what sort of a difference it could make.”
Listen to Daisy on the Rush Hour
Former Carlton great Brendan Fevola also called on the AFL to highlight men’s mental health and to help players prepare for life after football.
"When you're in footy, you are in it 100 per cent - you're training, you're meeting, you've got to be somewhere. It is like you're at an army base," he said on the Fifi, Fev and Nick podcast.
"Everything is scheduled, everything is structured, and you can't be late, you've got to be there.
“Then when you finish, if you haven't been smart enough or educated enough to have something afterward - which I wasn't - you just sit there and it's such a shock.
"You go 'my footy career's over, what am I doing to do? Holy crap, I don't need to be anywhere'. You start sleeping in, you get into bad habits.
"I just feel like the AFL aren't equipped, or aren't shining enough light on mental health for men.
"I think the AFL should come out and do a mental health round to start up the conversation, not just with footy players but for young tradies, or people in the workforce who are going through tough times. I don't think it gets spoken about enough."
The Australian Men’s Health Forum has developed a guide to help people have a conversation with a mate who's struggling.
The How to Help A Mate Doing It Tough guide was created with support from men's health workers with extensive knowledge and experience of having conversations with men. It features a simple ABC guide to helping a mate:
- Ask + Listen: Listen like a pro and help him get it off his chest.
- Build a Plan: When he's ready help him think about the actions he can take.
- Connect to Help: Check in soon to see how he's travelling and find out if he's getting help