R U OK?

Every year in Australia, we have “R U OK? Day” and every year I wonder why we can’t seem to stop putting the cart before the horse.

Suicide prevention is tricky work. It’s important work, too. Yet, suicide is the last desperate resort when someone feels that they have nothing left to lose. How does someone get to such a point in thier lives that suicide seems like the best outcome? The truth is that suicide is not the best outcome, but by the time someone has got to that point, they’re not in a position to dispassionately evaluate their options.

R U OK? Day was established in 2009 and has since become a national phenomenon. The idea is that people should reach out to those around them and ask “Are you okay?” which, theoretically, would start a conversation if someone is not okay, and perhaps change their life trajectory. It’s admirable.

What is less admirable is the enthusiam with which the corporate and government sectors have latched-on to R U OK? Day as a means of “raising awareness” in what could really only be described as a virtue-signalling endeavour.

There is no dispute that the mental health of Australians has been in decline for quite some time. Pre-existing issues in the community were exacerbated by the COVID pandemic and I don’t think many people have really recovered. But my concern is that R U OK? Day, It’s Okay Not to be Okay and others like them are really dealing with the pointy end of a crisis when it’s almost too late. Collectively, we need to step right back as a society and ask ourselves how we got to this place.

For the past 30 years, Australians have witnessed the slow dismantling of their social infrastructure in the name of “efficiency”. Let’s look at some examples:

• Employment: Where once the Commonwealth Employment Service would assist people find work, it’s all privatised now. Competition and minimum qualifications for many jobs has increased, whilst job security has plummeted. Where once government strove to be a big employer in its own right (complementing the private sector), now people have to fight it out amongst themselves. People are actively shamed if they need to rely on Centrelink, whose pitiful financial support only entrenches poverty and disadvantage.
• Education: People are often encouraged to “retrain” if they need to change careers, yet the cost of education is almost prohibitive. When I completed my degree (4 years, including Honours) in the early 2000s, I had a $16,000 debt. The same degree today would cost $100,000. Universities have been converted from houses of learning to cash-strapped career-driven vocational institutions, whilst TAFE has almost fallen into ruin. As for schools, the government sector is strapped for cash whilst the Church and independent schools are flushed with taxpayer funds.
• Housing: Where does one begin? The astronomical rise in house prices has meant that the sort of people who would have once been home-buyers are now forced to rent. Those who do buy are faced with mortages of such proportion that there is no prospect of them ever paying it off before retirement. Consequently, more people need to seek accomodation in the tight but lightly-regulated private rental market. Where once there were state Housing Commissions who were funded to build housing to sell to low-income families or otherwise rent to the working poor, these agencies have been stripped of funding and independence. Public housing is in rapid decline, whilst social housing takes its place on terms that are far less palatable to tenants.
• Economy: We used to call them “Economic Rationalists” in Australia; the sorts of people who advocated a neo-liberal concept that competition is in everyone’s best interests. Competion for jobs, competition for houses, competition for education, competition for everything.
• Services: Once upon a time the government owned the key utilities, but now many are either privatised or corporatised (government owned, but behaving like private companies). Energy costs have risen to alarming levels in a nation with abundant energy sources, and yet we pay through the nose because it’s “efficient”.

You get the picture. Young people barely stand a chance. And to add insult to injury, there’s environmental degredation and climate change that governments seem loathe to address.

When was the last time you heard a government politician say that a reform was aimed at making people’s lives easier, better, or more secure? In decades past, governments worked hard to improve the material lives of ordinary people, but now it’s all about economic returns. There is a general timidity within our political class towards bold reforms; ideas that once seemed normal (such as a state government building houses or running an electricity utility) now seem “controversial”.

Housing. Employment. Education. These are the cornerstones of people’s lives, and governments and corporations have done their best to undermine all three. And now we fret, wringing our hands and wondering why we have this “mental health crisis”. How much are people supposed to bear?

Now I can hear my critics hissing with contempt “This is just a ‘First World’ whinge”. I have been to Third World countries. I have seen their poor. I know that Australia cannnot compare. But I also know that the mental welfare of people depends on more than finances alone. There is a social fabric that plays a big part.

There has been a near-obsession by some to undermine the role of the churches in our society. It’s worth remembering that there is the institutional church, and then there is the day-to-day church that is made up of ordinary parishoners, basic people, who benefit socially from having a close-knit community to be a part of. Sure, this doesn’t suit everyone and the institutional churches are not without fault. But the dismantling of this piece of social infrastructure, like the removal of a social or sports club, has contributed further to a world that seems cold, cruel and isolating for many.

R U OK? Day is doing what it was designed to do, but the “mental health crisis” will not be resolved until we address the root causes of such isolation, dispair, lonliness and desperation that our moden society seems to foster so well.

It’s time that as a society, we started to work more towards supporting each other and enacting policies that improve our lives, even if that comes at the expense of some “efficiency”.

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