Warren's story

Warren's story

My name's Warren Brown. I spend a fair bit of my time doing church related things. I have a son that's 11 years old. He takes up a fair bit of my time. For a large part of my adulthood, who I've suffered from severe depression, post traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety. It's only just recently that I've started getting help for that and being medicated for that. There seems to be a stigma in the small country towns, they have a lack of understanding of mental health and I'm finding myself having to explain myself a lot to the people in the community.

For me, education's got to be a large part of breaking down the barriers as far as the stigma goes. A lot of the small country towns seem to have the old school mentality that people need to just get on with things and get over things. And to me, it's not as simple as that, there's a lot more involved than that. I think employers and just members of the community need to be open to have an understanding of the mental health issues that people are facing rather than just being closed minded. The only other real thing I've got to say is it's really, really important that people are open to have an understanding of mental health issues.