By Gerry Georgatos – Trae lost his eleven-year-old brother to suicide. Nine months later he lost his mother to suicide. Trae was the last to see his brother. Half an hour later he went looking for his little brother. In the booklet for young Peter’s funeral, Rhoda was quoted, “My baby boy, I will miss you […]
Health and Wellness
In the last several weeks a father of three who hailed relatively recent from India, suicides. So too a young father of one, Indian born. They are two of six this year, who migrated relatively recently from the subcontinent, whose families have reached out, following their suicides. And so too an Eritrean mother, South Sudanese […]
Gerry Georgatos – It has taken years for an at long last acknowledgement of the fact that nearly one-third of Australia’s suicides are of migrant born Australians, with a significant proportion relatively newly arrived. I have been writing relentlessly for years about the harrowing high number of suicides of the migrant-born and of the children […]
Gerry Georgatos – Suicide has always been with us despite its once again rising tide. It is not a tragedy of days modern but one of the ‘of the ages’, of human context. Suicide has always been considered historically as a breaking of the human spirit, of a downing of morale, relief from seeming endless […]
Gerry Georgatos – As a young child, nearly half a century ago, I remember the absorption of sadness by some of Sydney’s Greek community of the suicide by a newly arrived Greek male. There was sadness but more silence than words. Years later I would read some of his letters to the homeland, yearning to […]
Gerry Georgatos – Psychosocial is back. Disabling trauma as I’ve coined needs to core trauma understandings. Vicarious trauma is embedded in our daily lives. These premises may radicalise how we deal with trauma and conflict. There must be nothing that we fear discussing. Our psyches cannot remain as if unconscious. We need to develop substantial […]
We’re at the end of 2019’s first quarter and tragically the Australian suicide toll stands at 750 thus far. Suicide is the leading cause of unnatural deaths, yet suicide prevention is not a national priority. The Australian suicide toll is: more than two and a half times the national road toll; more than 30 times […]
We, as a nation, have always prided ourselves on the quality, accessibility and affordability of our health system. Particularly when we make comparisons to the cost of the system in places such as America etc, we come out looking particularly strong. The Health Department makes the following statements on its website: Australia’s health system is […]
Homelessness can be ended but the will to do so is not a universal one. In the world’s 12th biggest economy, Australia, the number of older women who are homeless has doubled in the past four years. Australia has among the world’s highest median wages, argues itself as a global social justice warrior but the […]
Gerry Georgatos (The Stringer, 17 November 2017) argues that we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed and dominated by trauma, that we should get back on our feet, strengthened by our scars. He is right, of course, that trauma does not have to be a life sentence, but the question is … how do […]
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