Parental Alienation Awareness Day Australia

With special guest:

• Amanda Sillars

Sometimes good can come from the most horrific events in a person’s life.

Amanda Sillars is our guest in this program and Amanda has experienced extreme parental alienation both as a child and a targeted parent. Her reaction has been to become an energetic campaigner against parental alienation which affects so many children and parents in our community.

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Connect, Communicate, Care

With special guest:

• Kim Borrowdale

The World Health Organisation estimates that over 800,000 people die by suicide every year - that’s one every 40 seconds. In Australia the latest figures show that 2,684 Australians took their own life in 2014. And what is worse is that the official figures are undoubtedly conservative because of the method of reporting and the desire by survivors to avoid the stigma of having a family member dying in that way.

Against this desire to keep the facts quiet, communication is a primary way of raising awareness in the community. Communication is the driver of R U OK?, an Australian group doing great work to help reduce suicide. We also hear how the Connect Communicate Care messages of World Suicide Prevention Day are important ways of responding to the unacceptably high suicide rate in Australia.

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The Prostate Cancer Challenge

With special guest:

• Peter Dornan AM

Our guest is not squeamish about many things. He opens up to us today about what it is like to face a condition that we still do not like talking about, urinary incontinence. Incontinence affects men and women; it has been described as the most widespread yet least known and understood affliction in society today. This problem can seriously impact on your lifestyle, job, emotional wellbeing, exercise activity and most importantly, your sex life.

Peter Dornan has been a leading Physiotherapist for over fifty years and during that time he has helped patients with all sorts of complaints. Yet twenty years ago he did not know what a prostate was when he was told that he had prostate cancer and if he did not take any action it would kill him.

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Fight Like A Pro

With special guest:

• Gavin Topp

Today’s show is a knockout! Our guest is Gavin Topp and he tells us about his training program called Fight Like a Pro which he runs on the Gold Coast of Queensland.

It is not an overstatement to say that the program has changed lives because on top of the physical aspects of training hard with a group of fellow amateurs Gavin looks for the mental changes in his charges. You might not expect to hear life lessons from a professional boxer but as numerous testimonials on the website of Fight Like a Pro will confirm Gavin is a bit of a philosopher as well as a hard physical taskmaster.

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Transformation: Turning tragedy into triumph

With special guest:

• Dr Tim Sharp

Our guest in this program is Dr Tim Sharp, also known as Dr Happy.

Tim has produced a new book Transformation: Turning tragedy into triumph and he joins us today to spread a little happiness. The book has eleven people making a contribution with a story about themselves or someone close to them. Some of the contributors’ stories are well-known while others tell of living a quiet life before they reached a turning point in their life story. Looking outside themselves brought surprising benefits not only to others but to the contributors as well.

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Hunter Valley Men’s Crisis Support

With special guest:

• Philip Penfold

Charity starts at home.

Philip Penfold, our guest today, was born and raised in Maitland NSW. When he spent 18 months in the USA he witnessed first-hand how community minded the Americans were and it inspired him to do something for his own hometown.

Philip did not have to look too far before he realised that homeless men in the Hunter region desperately needed someone to care. This led to the establishment in 2011 of Hunter Valley Men’s Crisis Support which provides assistance to homeless men in Maitland/Lower Hunter. This support group aims to give blokes a hand up when they are at their lowest point. They do this by providing practical, short-term assistance to men experiencing or at risk of homelessness or financial difficulty.

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Stop Male Suicide

With special guest:

• Glen Poole

Every day in Australia five men die from suicide. While every single suicide is a tragedy, men account for 75% of all suicides in this country. How is it that while male suicide is increasing the numbers for women are improving? We need to investigate and see if this success can be replicated for men. Even a small improvement in the numbers has an enormous effect on the emotional cost and the financial cost to all of us.

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Flesh Wounds

With special guest:

• Richard Glover

Our guest today is famous.

Richard Glover is the host of the top rating Drive show on 702 ABC Sydney, and the weekly podcast of Thank God It’s Friday. He is the author of twelve books including the bestseller In Bed with Jocasta. His new book Flesh Wounds is in a similar humorous vein but the big difference this time is that it is the real story of his unusual, to say the least, upbringing.

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The Cost of Suicide

With special guest:

• Carolyn Kelso

The construction industry has nearly one million workers in Australia and 98% of these workers are male. But interestingly our guest today to talk about that industry is female. Carolyn Kelso has the dual role of Case Manager and Field Officer for MATES in Construction (MIC) and she has had an interest in suicide prevention since her first introduction to construction through family and friends.

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Movember’s got a new MOVE

With special guest:

• Sam Gledhill

Since 2003 the month after October has had a new name which inspires men in 21 countries around the world to change their appearance. Yes it is Movember and that is when the upper lips of businessmen, sportsmen, young men, older men and males of all descriptions sprout for a good cause.

Our guest today is Sam Gledhill, Men’s Health Program Manager for Movember. Sam tells us about the storied beginnings of this great Australian charity. From a challenge over a few beers between mates it has now raised over $685 million and the proceeds have been applied in areas where there was little attention paid by health policy makers.

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Relating to Men

With special guest:

• Jasmin Newman

Why would a mother of two children living in the idyllic town of Merimbula on the south coast of NSW become an advocate for men and their children? Jasmin Newman is the right person to ask.

Jasmin tells us she was affronted by the lack of social justice towards men in our society where the pain of many men is ignored and dismissed as irrelevant. At the extreme end of this pain is the despair and hopelessness associated with suicide. We hear from Jasmin the truly extraordinary information that on average 39 men are recorded in the Australian statistics every week as “death by suicide.”

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National Emergency – Suicide Rates for Our Men

With special guest:

• Anthony Smith

1901 male deaths by suicide were recorded in 2012 along with another 634 females meaning a total of 2,535 Australians lost their lives in this way. There has been no significant improvement in the period since these figures became available.

Our guest today, Anthony Smith, argues that these figures are conservative and the belief of the people working in this area is that the figure for men should be some 500 higher. Reasons for this conservatism include the shortfall in the number of Coronial enquiries and the general reluctance of Coroners to brand a sudden death as suicide because this only makes it harder for the surviving family members to deal with the tragedy.

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Torn

With special guest:

• Simon Williams

Simon Williams is a big strong Queenslander. We find him living in Florida USA, a long way from home with a heartbreaking story to tell.

Simon left Queensland for the USA with his qualifications as a Physiotherapist in his back pocket. After landing a job in Florida he joined the local rugby team where he was instantly identified by his accent as being from a strong rugby nation. While not reaching the heights of Wallaby selection Simon was selected for the Florida state rugby team and went on tour to Uruguay. This is one of the many adventures described by Simon in his new book Torn: The Story of an Undeserving Wallaby Drowning in a Septic Tank. This book is earthy, funny and provides a fresh look at our friends on the other side of the Pacific but there is an undercurrent throughout the book which is what we pick up on in the interview.

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Daddy’s OK

With special guest:

• Dean Mason

In his book Daddy’s OK: Fathers’ stories of separation, divorce and rebuilding author Dean Mason takes us into the world of 14 families that have been through the trauma of separation and divorce. The 2006 Census showed that 50% of children in single parent families never have an overnight stay with the other parent, normally the Dad. But if our eyes glass over when contemplating the tens of thousands of Dads in this situation Dean brings it back to the individual personal level with these real life stories from his days as National Chairman of Dads in Distress Support Services.

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Justice 4 Liam Magill

With special guest:

• Cheryl King

Cheryl King is a strong believer in social justice and a loyal friend who does not shy away from a fight with the biggest institutions in the country.

Cheryl met Liam Magill in 1999 when Liam had to contend not only with the trauma many men face after marriage breakdown but also a twist that turned into a nightmare.

At first Liam ignored the strong indications that maybe he was not the biological father of his three children from the marriage but DNA testing confirmed his worst fears. Two of the three children were not his but resulted from an affair that his then wife Meredith had engaged in with a family friend. Worse, the children had been turned against him and the Child Support Agency was after his life savings.

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Men's Health Week 2015

With special guest:

• Prof Gary Richardson

There is a health crisis affecting 49% of the Australian population, namely Australian men.

The establishment of Foundation 49: Men’s Health is a direct response aimed at improving the health of Australian men. The figures are mind-blowing with more than four men dying every hour from potentially preventable conditions.

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The Diggers of WW1: Were they different?

With special guest:

• Andrew Tink AM

No book on Australia covering the early years of the twentieth century could overlook the 61,500 of our men killed or listed as “missing” in World War 1. Another 156,000 had a fate that was sometimes worse, they were wounded, gassed or taken prisoner.

In his new book Australia 1901-2001: A narrative history, Andrew Tink, former Member of State Parliament, tells us that like the school children of Villers-Bretonneux France we must never forget the heroism of our soldiers, the diggers of World War 1.

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Talk to a mate

With special guest:

• Owen Catto

Just about everything starts with our health, it is so important. The Regional Men’s Health Initiative in WA identifies three parts to our health, namely physical, mental and social/spiritual.

Owen Catto has worked for the past 7 years in men’s holistic health and wellbeing across an enormous geographic area in Western Australia. In his work in regional centres as well as remote outstations what he has found out about the men is that “we are all blokes” and therefore the strategies for empowering men are similar wherever he finds them.

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Australia's First Peoples

With special guest:

• Jeff McMullen

For National Close the Gap Day we speak to Jeff McMullen.

Jeff McMullen is a household name in Australia with a major presence as a recognised international current affairs journalist. Throughout his distinguished 50 year career our guest today has written filmed and campaigned around the world to improve the health, education and human rights of Indigenous people.

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Life in Limbo: My battle with depression, infertility and mental illness

With special guest:

• Matt Barwick

In his book Life in Limbo Matt Barwick says that men in their desire to be alpha-male typically hide behind an impenetrable wall of machismo. So if anyone asks “How ya going?” the response is most likely going to be a stoic “Yeah everything’s fine.” No-one must see any sign of weakness or fragility, particularly male friends. The result is that most men avoid open and honest communication about physical or mental health.

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