jaimee Charles

Support my walk for mental health research

This October, together with my Family I’ll be taking part in One Foot Forward to help reduce the impact of mental illness and suicide. This is such an important cause to me as someone who has seen the effects of depression on the people I love the most! Depression is an illness that not many people like to talk about and quite often people believe that you must have been through something traumatic in your life to suffer which is not the case! I have watched my amazing husband suffer with his inner demons and I am so proud of how he chooses to fight them and the way he supports and checks in with everyone he can. On the 22th of July after a long battle with unexplainable chronic pain my hero, my Dad, the strongest man I knew took his own life. I watched the man I loved more than anything become a shell of the person he used to be. He tried everything he could to get answers for his physical pain but in himself couldn’t understand what physical effects depression can cause on your body and he was severely let down by a flawed medical system which believes that if you are not an immediate risk to yourself or others then you are not a priority no matter how many times you call for help! My Dad has now become just another statistic and it is my goal to make sure that he is a statistic that counts towards making a change so other people don’t have to go through the pain we are currently experiencing. It is important to me that we raise awareness and get people talking about mental health because even the strongest of people who have the most to live for and amazing support systems can still suffer from this invisible disease. It would mean so much to me if you donated to support my walk. Together, we can create better mental health for all Australians.