Troy Selwood RIP

[JHF1870]

R U OK? has its place in my opinion, but to throw yellow balloons and cupcakes at the epidemic once a year is not going to be effective. It's an every day thing, building those relationships (especially with work colleagues) where a degree of trust is developed where one person can respond honestly to the question and the other can provide the appropriate support, whether it's just an attentive ear, or someone to provide active help. It requires people to park their work for 10 minutes and just go out for a coffee (and for other people in the office to not roll their eyes), to not see a message in Teams from someone you haven't been in touch with for a few weeks and immediately think, "I wonder what they need me to do for them?" It requires people to not feel like bludgers if they have an answer besides "Flat out" to "How's work going?"

Troy Selwood always seemed like one of the good guys of footy. He was a huge part of the development of Geelong's young players during the 2010s and he had a key role in developing so many of Geelong's young draftees into 2022 premiership players.

Gutted by this news. Rest in peace.

RUOk day annoys me because organizations use it to make it look like they give a toss. In reality we are all just numbers. I got frustrated at the end of last year because I was sick of being so iaolated and alone I spoke up about it and how we need to do more than a stupid one day a year. I openly discussed on FB about how I was struggling.

Not ONE single person sent me a DM to ask if I was OK. GOT A FEW emojis butbtgat was it. Outside thst day, noone is willing to have those conversations.

 

[T2B_]

RUOk day annoys me because organizations use it to make it look like they give a toss. In reality we are all just numbers. I got frustrated at the end of last year because I was sick of being so iaolated and alone I spoke up about it and how we need to do more than a stupid one day a year. I openly discussed on FB about how I was struggling.

Not ONE single person sent me a DM to ask if I was OK. GOT A FEW emojis butbtgat was it. Outside thst day, noone is willing to have those conversations.

I feel like, a bit like bystander syndrome (I think its called?), people just hope and assume someone else is doing the messaging so they dont have to.

Which is... Sad.

 

[PhatBoy]

Sigh.

I don't want this to get too political but it can't be helped in a way.

I was just listening to news radio and the story was about closure of Bowls Clubs. An academic was talking about their inherent value to wellbeing of people who use them, above and beyond their (often lack of) profitability.

We have a society that more and more can measure the cost of everything but the value of nothing. Great ideas are not great until they are monetised. Public amenity is just a waste of taxes. We work harder, stay home more, buy more shit and are less connected than ever before.

That’s a big thing here where I am at the moment. Four major local council facilities are the subject of almost every monthly meeting and their profitability - they’re all basically museums or art facilities and they are a drain on the local economy but they are actually reasonably well patronised and especially among the older community in three cases, and by young mums on one, and the majority of people commenting on community Facebook and social media pages don’t give a shit. All they see are figures.

Yes I get it, people want to know where their tax dollars go but equally if they’re not going towards these things they are just going to go towards something else they don’t like anyway. If something has value to people, try and let them enjoy it as best they can.

So many things in this world can mean more to people than what you can put a dollar figure on

 

[fake tyrone]

It shouldn’t be taboo, but men opening up about emotions and feelings is still problematic it seems. There are few idiots on BF that have thrown around the RU OK as an insult, so clearly they are the ones stooping to the levels of making it a joke or using it to insult people because they see it as not ‘blokey’. I’d like to see moderators impose bans if it’s bandied around in the wrong context.

No idea what happened to Troy Selwood to bring him to this point, and it’s really hard because one never really knows but now he is gone and that’s the end.

I think the last sentence here is very important. Some very good points have been raised in this thread and there has been some great discussion that is genuine and authentic, but at the end of the day, we're never going to truly know why someone took their own life because they're not here to tell us why. Suicide is awfully complex and often involves many intermingling reasons and factors that can't be parsed out after the fact. I think this is what makes suicide such a brutal event; as humans we want answers so that we can explain what is happening around us and restore a sense of certainty and purpose in our lives, but we often can't get that sort of closure with suicide.

We do still have a lot of work to do in the space of encouraging men to talk about their thoughts and emotions and providing them with safe spaces to do so, but I do think we're slowly moving the needle in that area. I have some mates who share things today that they never would have 10 years ago, but I also have some mates who are as much of a closed shop today as they were a decade ago. As someone else already pointed out, we're only a couple of generations into undoing the stigma around men talking about how they feel, so there really is probably a long way to go yet.

 

[joe444]

A side note of kudos to the Geelong Advertiser for reporting:
The 40-year-old took his own life after battling mental health issues in recent years.

It's been a few years now since Victoria's coroner pleaded with the media to simply use the word "suicide", rather than hide behind "Call Lifeline" etc etc. His argument, and I agree with it, is that mental health is best improved through discussion. Creating the impression that suicide is unmentionable doesn't help at all.

 

[Cdog71]

Very sad news

 

[fake tyrone]

A side note of kudos to the Geelong Advertiser for reporting:
The 40-year-old took his own life after battling mental health issues in recent years.

It's been a few years now since Victoria's coroner pleaded with the media to simply use the word "suicide", rather than hide behind "Call Lifeline" etc etc. His argument, and I agree with it, is that mental health is best improved through discussion. Creating the impression that suicide is unmentionable doesn't help at all.

I wasn't aware of this plea from the coroner. Thanks for sharing.

 

[joe444]

I wasn't aware of this plea from the coroner. Thanks for sharing.

The Age headline should have been, "Coroner found making request: no signs of question mark"

 

[Saint]

That’s a big thing here where I am at the moment. Four major local council facilities are the subject of almost every monthly meeting and their profitability - they’re all basically museums or art facilities and they are a drain on the local economy but they are actually reasonably well patronised and especially among the older community in three cases, and by young mums on one, and the majority of people commenting on community Facebook and social media pages don’t give a shit. All they see are figures.

Yes I get it, people want to know where their tax dollars go but equally if they’re not going towards these things they are just going to go towards something else they don’t like anyway. If something has value to people, try and let them enjoy it as best they can.

So many things in this world can mean more to people than what you can put a dollar figure on

Now with physical health, people are starting to recognise it more. Council provides more and more for not just recreation, but actual exercise outside of organised sport.

Do they set aside money for mental health? Quiet places specifically for contemplation and the value of peaceful and quiet spaces? A friend is moving to a more inner city area and was worried they would be overwhelmed constantly. Until I told them Caulfield Racecourse is a public space and they'd basically have the whole inside to themselves for the majority of the week if they could be bothered.

 

[Saint]

It's enough of a nightmare trying to convince politicians and idiots of the value of preventative physical medicine (free dental, subsidised healthy food, free sport facilities). God help the people who try to convince those same numbskulls of the value of preventative mental health measures. Even for "idiots" who like "stupid" things.

 

[Bucking Bronco]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Frawley, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

 

[demondavey]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

To an extent, but Tuck and Selwood also had some serious head knocks playing the game. Wonder if it’s pertinent to Selwood’s case.

 

[kickazz]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

Bold being the key bit. Kidding ourselves if we think there weren't any.

Werther effect sounds like VERY old school thinking.

 

[JHF1870]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

Spud?

 

[demondavey]

Spud?

2019 I believe

 

[demondavey]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Frawley, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

There’d have to be suicides prior to that.

 

[fake tyrone]

There was no AFL player who had committed suicide prior to Shane Yarran in 2018, to my knowledge.

Now there is Yarran, Harley Balic, Shane Tuck, Frawley, Cam McCarthy, Selwood; and Majak Daw attempting to.

I was just reading about the Werther effect the other day coincidentally, which kind of explains this

There's another thread on this board listing former AFL and state league players who have died prematurely. A number of them are deaths by suicide prior to 2018.

 

[Saint]

Earliest I could find was 1933, Norm Collins.

 

[Bucking Bronco]

There's another thread on this board listing former AFL and state league players who have died prematurely. A number of them are deaths by suicide prior to 2018.

A lot of deaths by suicide over the last 5 years from players from the 90s that I've never heard of.

I'm sure there were deaths by suicide over the decades that are harder to find due to the absence of reporting/ record keeping of the times, but sadly not at this frequency

 

[discodaddy]

Terrible news.

Wishing him family and friends all the best.

 

[joe444]

A sad list to be on (prior to 2018, in response to #89)
1902 Fred Ball
1914 George Cochrane, Dave Adamson
1922 Tom Fogarty
1929 Dick Wardill
1933 Norm Collins
1934 Bill Woodhouse
1940 Bert Renfrey
1960 Bill Morris
1990 Rhett Baynes
2001 Graeme Reichman (murderer)
2002 David Crutchfield
2008 Jeff Fehrig
2017 Malcolm Scott

And in an era where suicides often went unreported and a Catholic family would bribe officials to misreport ...

 

[T2B_]

To an extent, but Tuck and Selwood also had some serious head knocks playing the game. Wonder if it’s pertinent to Selwood’s case.

Frawley was also found to have CTE

 

[craffles]

There’s a lot of healthy discourse around in this thread but there’s still a lot of misdirection. When someone is so mentally unwell that they take their own life it’s not a conversation that would have changed their path. It’s hospitalisation, it’s professional care, it’s medication, it’s all of this for more then just a few months until “they feel better”.

It’s a serious illness. The stigma isn’t about talking up anymore, it’s about genuine lifelong treatment and management.

 

[Obeanie1]

To an extent, but Tuck and Selwood also had some serious head knocks playing the game. Wonder if it’s pertinent to Selwood’s case.

Was wondering if concussions may have contributed to his mind set / depression.

Feel for his family who now are living without him.

Terribly sad situation.

 

[Chicken Treat]

Shit to see someone go down that path in that stage of life. RIP.

And speaking of employers and mental health, still one of the best takes I've read with regards to the taboo that employees face

You Really Want to Know?

I just want to say a few things about the ridiculous RUOK Campaign. Despite the best of intentions, unless you are prepared for the following answer: “No, actually, I am not OK. My life has fed me a…

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