health

The moving campaign that's challenging what it means to 'be a man'.

For Gus Worland, life completely changed with one phone call.

Standing on a golf course, he received a call from a friend. “Angus is dead,” was all he heard. “Angus is dead.”

He couldn’t comprehend what had happened, and later he was told his friend Angus had taken his own life. Worland describes his friend as “the most charismatic, charming, funny, successful man in my life, a guy who was financially stable, good looking and healthy as an ox.”

For the life of him, he couldn’t understand why it had happened.

That was until he thought about masculinity, and the fact certain topics just aren’t discussed between men. Vulnerability isn’t shown, and stoicism is valued. While he had talked to Angus frequently, they hadn’t discussed the important things. Not the truly important things.

Gus Worland and his friend Angus. Image via ABC.
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Statistics show that the most common cause of death for Australian men aged between 15 to 44 is suicide. That's ahead of car accidents, cancer and heart disease.

For Gus Worland, and for most Australians, this simply isn't acceptable. It's sickening. It's disturbing. And it's affected almost all of us personally.

Following his friend's death, and the way it fundamentally changed him, Worland decided to develop a three part series for the ABC, focusing on men and mental health - the final episode of which aired on Tuesday night.

In the series, he aimed to discuss the messages men receive about vulnerability, tears, silence, and sensitivity. But it was a campaign he aired at the very end of Tuesday night's episode that particularly resonated with viewers.

It features males, from birth to old age, crying. Genuinely crying. A baby, a young boy, young men, and older men. It's powerful and it's moving. At most, it goes some way towards giving men permission to vulnerable, and at the very least, it starts an important conversation.

It's the video we all need to see.