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September 11, 2024 • 14 mins

John Brogden joins Jonesy & Amanda for an extraordinary chat about mental health.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
James and Amanda gam Nation.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Well, you may know our next guest is a formal politician.
But nineteen years ago almost everything ended when John Brogden
attempted to take his own life. He's not alone. The
statistics are horrifying. Every day nine Australians die by suicide,
more than double the deaths on rhoads. Five percent of
people who do take their own lives are male. Well,

(00:23):
John's using his story and the stories of fifteen others
to help people shatter the silence around suicide. A new
book called Profiles of Hope John High. Are you nice
to see it?

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Are you? Aka? Day?

Speaker 1 (00:36):
Yeah? Absolutely important day? I am okay, How are you guys?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
Yeah, I'm good, you know, thank you hearing that thing
from James package just yeah, you can be whoever and
it can just hitch you.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Look, it was incredible, you know. He was my first
interview in the book, and I went and spent some
time with him in his home in Argentina. And he's
a guy who's incredibly privileged, incredibly wealthy, who focuses on
his failures, not his successes in life, who by his

(01:07):
own admission, so I'm not being I'm not trying to
embarrass him when I say this has an incredible struggle
with his weight, has an incredible struggle with you know,
when he's bouncing back and forth with alcohol and cigarettes
and the like. And he's a great example of it
doesn't matter how privileged you are, mental health doesn't discriminate.

(01:27):
And after the Spotlight report, people blogged away with their
comments and they were universally supportive and sympathetic. You would
have thought people might say, I care about James Packer's
worth billions, you can look after himself. I've got real
problems in life. He hasn't. But everybody who blogged said,
you know, I feel for this guy. I had one

(01:50):
person actually text me and say, I was sitting next
to my son, my adult son, watching this who's got
terribly overweight, that some of the medication is taken for
his mental illness. And I said, look, even James Packet
as that problem. So the way I wrote the book
the Interviews, was to get a collection of Australia's very

(02:13):
wide cross section of people, so that everyone who reads
it can look in and see a bit of themselves.
So there's a great farmer in there, Peter Maloney, which
tells that classic country story. There's a young bloke who
survived his suicide only to spend his at sixteen suicide attempt,

(02:33):
only to be now spending the rest of his life
in a wheelchair, but with this incredible determination to walk again.
And you know, I ask a question of many people,
did you have to get that low to bounce back?
And almost universally that they say yes. They also say,
like Jackie Lamby, I wish I didn't have to get

(02:53):
that far to bounce back. But they have bounced back,
and in many cases, you know, I don't think Jackie
Lamby when she was sixteen and joined the army, thought
she'd be a senator almost running the country. Sometimes with
the things that she says and the way she resonates
with the public, I think a lot of these people
have had transformative changes, but there are some struggle stories

(03:17):
in there where people their success is actually just still
being alive and you know that they're still going through it.
The way James was telling us on Sunday night, I
mean that was incredibly I think raw's a great word
for the way James went through it. And you know,
he's been there and I've been there, and what I
want this book to tell people. Tell as you said, Amanda,

(03:40):
the nine Australians on average will take their live lives today.
The sixty five thousand Australians every year who attempt suicide
sixty five thousand is there's a way through, and there
is hope even when you think nobody cares. Because my
experience was that I stuffed up publicly. I felt I'd
shamed you see our family, or my friends, all my supporters.

(04:03):
I've become such a burden that the best thing for me,
not the not the only thing, The best thing for
me was to take my life. And I knew you
guys back then.

Speaker 3 (04:14):
That was the day, like we were.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
The last we spoke to you on the night that
you went to that function, and I said, you're in
the box seat, Bob Cars resigned.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
You are going to be our next premier.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Well yeah, and it.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Just unraveled from that and I did. And I remember
at the time how we handled it, and I feel
I don't know if I had the mental capacity back
then you just said, oh, John's gone crazy. But then
you look at it now, how you've come round and
the awareness about.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
It was the spike though, what did save you?

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Well, to be honest, what saved me was the police
turned up to my office and got me early, well
before I died.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
That's what happened.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
But how have you saved yourself every day since?

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Well, through a number of ways, but without a doubt.
You know, my lifeline is my wife and now our children,
and you know that's that's good for me, but it's
a challenge for them, right. I mean, I have suicidality
and depression. I'll have suicidality probably for the rest of
my life. What does that mean? That means part of

(05:16):
my makeup is if something goes really bad for me,
usually emotionally or personally, not so much like in business
life and those sorts of things, but personally and emotionally,
and if it's if I catastrophize it, yeah, in a
way that you two might say, look, actually that's okay,
you can get through that. But for me, I think
I can't get through it, and then I start to

(05:36):
think about suicide. So over twenty years since that happened,
nineteen years, I've begun to learn how to better handle that.
So people often say, what does that include? And it
does include? And this might I think people thought this
was arrogant in my amongst friends and family. But do

(05:57):
you know how as Australians we're really good at having
to go to Arnie so and so's Christmas party and
people are rude to us, so we don't like it,
or somebody's going to ask us the question, and I
just don't go to those things anymore because I know
they're going to upset me. Now for a while people
would have thought, well, what he's up himself for whatever
it is. But I don't like big late night functions anymore.
So there are a number of things I choose not

(06:18):
to do because I know they'll either get me too tight,
which is bad and therefore you know, batteries down and susceptible,
or I just don't like them anymore, which is funny
because in the old game you had to do seven
a week, right, one for every night, so everybody has
their own solution. There's a fantastic story in there of
this farmer called Peter Maloney who was a Brisbane electrician

(06:42):
but married a country girl so had to go and
be a farmer from scratch. And you know what farmers
are like. They're pretty hard on people from the city
and who become new farmers. He found it incredibly hard
to adjust. He had crippling dyslexia as a kid, picked
on all that sort of stuff, and he got to
that point where he tried to take his own life.

(07:02):
And it was only one of his kids riding up
on a motorbike to where he had gone to take
his own life, where he decided, no, I'm not going
to do that. And he's turned that around and he's
changed his life. He does meditation every morning, quijong every morning,
and he's the great thing for breakfast people, morning people,
a three minute ice bath every morning. So a lot
of people have radically changed their life and set it

(07:25):
on a new path. And as I said, the fascinating
question I ask is did you have to get to
that point to bounce back? In the answers years, But
the messages that I want this book to tell people
is there is a way through. You know, you get
to that point you think no one loves you. You
may burn some bridges along the way, and the reality

(07:45):
is that might be true, but Lifeline wants you to
be alive. A lot of people want you to be life.
And here's the thing. Over the last twenty years, I
think it's probably twenty years we've got much better at
realizing that mental health, anxiety, depression, etcetera. Is normal. It's

(08:05):
just like people who have kidney diseases and heart attacks
and all of those sort of things. It just happens
to be an illness of the organ called the brain
as opposed to a body. You know, something in physical
unless in your body. I think we've done great work there.
And you guys have been in this industry for a
long time. You know you wouldn't have had this conversation.

Speaker 4 (08:28):
Thirty years ago, like nineteen years ago. We've rounded a
corner with it. I have like in the old days,
because I don't have anxiety. Yeah, I do notice if
I drink too much, I get anxiety. So I do
get a hangover anxiety because I think, what did I
say last night? I do as I get older, so
I'm adjusting how much I drink these days.

Speaker 3 (08:47):
I think that's part of just getting old of it.
We are what you've done as an advocate. I just
command you for it.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Oh, thanks great.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
And recognizing your triggers is a very interesting, it's very
impractical thing to do.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
It is, and that point about normalizing mental illness is
very important because more and more people talk about it,
and you know, whether it's forty people or famous people,
people in the street. I often will say to people,
and it's part also of breaking the barrier, how you're going,
how's in mental health? Not how's in mental health? And

(09:21):
often I know they've been through a tough time or
they've got a tough time coming up. And people don't
bullshit me on that point, they say, oh, you know,
it's a bit so that's changed, are you Okays important,
But we don't want to normalize suicide because we actually
want people to live. We actually want them to live.
So it's strange to say this. There's nothing normal about suicide,

(09:44):
and we shouldn't. I don't want anyone to think it's
normal to suicide. And that's not a religious judgment or
a value judgment. And I tried to kill myself, so
I'd be the last person to impose that view. What
I am saying is we I want you to live
with apologies to wham choose life. You're better off being

(10:05):
alive than dead, and we can get you through. We
can get you through. And the challenge we have is
those suicide numbers are very stubborn. They're not going down.
But believe it or not, During COVID suicide dropped five
percent in Australia. Wouldn't you well, Jonesy's looking at me saying,

(10:25):
what are you talking about? You know, how could that
be right? You know what? I put it down to
a few things. There's no doubt job keeper was a lifesaver.
People didn't have to worry about money in the bank.
But put that aside. Everybody put their head over the
back fence or over the balcony in the unit block
and said, do you need anything in our little group

(10:46):
of houses. The people down the road went to the
old couple and said, don't worry, we'll take your bins up.
We're going shopping. Do you need anything? We got a
COVID dog. Of course, we've got a COVID dog. And
as you walk the dog, you don't just gnawed and
say good morning. You stop and chatted to people. And
I yelled this from the rooftops as the chair of lifeline.

(11:07):
Just ring somebody, just ring somebody for that day. Somebody
haven't contacted for years, or it just dropped them a text.
And I think we became really connected suicide dropped almost
the minute. Sorry, presentations for mental health went through the roof.
Lifelines calls went through the roof. Now that's a double

(11:27):
edged sword. You say, oh my god, what a disaster.
Lifelines numbers have doubled. I say, there's a lot of
crisis out there, but thank god be ringing people the
sixty years we've been yelling from the rooftops, call lifeline.
And what happened is that the magic call we got,
mostly from Blokes, was not only is this the first

(11:49):
time I've called Lifeline. I never thought I'd have to
call Lifeline. Now I see that as a great thing
reaching out. But in terms of your own triggers, it's critical.
But Amanda, I could be talking to you about diabetes.
I could be saying, do this, don't do that, do this,
don't do that to have a good life, to live
with diabetes. I could be talking about heart disease. You know,

(12:09):
donate too much red meat?

Speaker 3 (12:10):
What did he like?

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Therefore, I talk to you about what are the good
things for your own mental health? You know, having depression,
it is about getting the right amount of sleep. It
is about not getting hisself in stressful positions. It is
usually about not drinking much and not eating bad stuff.
And it also includes getting a heart like a half
an hour of sun on your face every day. Now

(12:34):
you think, what's all that about. There is actually a
chemical reaction that will be beneficial to your for battling depression,
getting out in the sun and staying social. So Ian
Thorpe's in this book, and he is the most He
has I think the greatest burden of fame of anyone

(12:55):
I've met. He can't go down the road. I don't
know how he goes and buys bread and milk right
without being mobbed or asking for order.

Speaker 4 (13:01):
And also people are judging about his sexuality, yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Or looking at it, you know, that staring thing looking
at him, and so his burdens incredible. You know, he
was sweating for Australia at fourteen and the sexuality points fascinating.
He tells the story in this book that at sixteen
when he was winning and becoming a national sensation, because
the bloke's seventeen foot tall, and you know, he's got

(13:25):
the most extraordinary swimmers body and recognizable. You know at
sixteen as he gets out, as he got out of
the water, a journalist said to him, oh, are you
gay at sixteen? I remember, you know, just extraordinary, he
says in the book. He later found out from that
journalist who was terribly embarrassed apology, that he would have

(13:47):
got the sack. The journal was told, you'll get the
sack if you don't ask that question. Now, thank god,
those meanings have changed and society's changed. But with the end,
he has a list and he said, I've got a
list of things. Well, he said, I've got a list
of things. I said, a written list. You said, there
written lists.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
He said.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
If I don't walk the dog for two days, there's
something wrong with me. If I'm not cooking myself dinner,
I'm not eating properly, there's something If I'm drinking too much.
And my friends have that list. It was fascinating, so
they'll check in out.

Speaker 3 (14:14):
Have you done this?

Speaker 1 (14:15):
Yeah, So that's about getting your network supportive. So there
are lots of different.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Stories, and John, you're giving the whole book away. Here,
sit on your treasures. I grab a copy of Profiles
in Hope. Now I had all good bookstores.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
I'm disappointed to see you didn't bring Lucy's Muffins.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Co nineteen years ago.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
That a little dry they were savory. Who makes savory?
I remember it was who make savory?

Speaker 3 (14:40):
Much? Is that what you said?

Speaker 4 (14:43):
I'm the biggest savory guy in the world now, Jay Brow,
It is so good to talk to you, mate.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
Thank you for coming in, and.

Speaker 1 (14:50):
Thank you guys for always being there for me when
I need to talk about mental health and.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
We always are. John, Thanks you
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