Kai Eardley was a 20-year-old young man with a loving family, girlfriend, good mates and a passion for football but took his own life in 2016. Out of tragedy came something beautiful and lasting when his mother Claire founded Kai-Fella Foundation. Kai-Fella was his nickname and honours his life.
Guest speakers Tahlia and Matt explained that the organisation focuses on early intervention and emotional wellbeing, targeting mostly Year 9-Year 12 students but also taking workshops out to sporting groups.
The workshops are run separately for boys and girls, across three progressive levels. For young women, they explore confidence, self-worth, coping with social pressure and body image. For the guys, the focus is daring to be different from stereotype pressure and peer expectations.
Kai-Fella has already conducted 100 workshops to date across various schools such as Hale, CBC, All Saints and Rossmoyne High School; plus Movember and WA College of Agriculture. They hope to run to 300 this year.
Matt and Tahlia asked us to talk about what we were like as teenagers. For most of us things were very different then, with Kenn saying we were just too busy growing up to question ourselves or become depressed and Chris said that he lived for sport.
Members couldn’t wait for question time and Ian asked if Matt and Tahlia felt depression precedes suicide. Matt said he felt that was a complex question and there were a number of drivers, which can include depression. For him personally during his teenage years, the feeling was of being lost and hopeless and not being able to confide in friends for fear of being thought lame or weak.
Some alarming mental health statistics: Nine Australians die from suicide every day; 75 per cent of mental health issues occur before the age of 25; 90 per cent of young people are not satisfied with their body image and only 4 per cent of women call themselves beautiful. One in five men will experience anxiety in their life and 48 per cent of them would not reach out to their mates if they were struggling. That is one of the main aims of Kai-Fella, that young people, especially males, learn to confide in their friends without fear of derision or judgement.
Nine Australians die by suicide every day.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Matt and Tahlia had a queue of members wanting to speak to them and ask more questions. As Chris rightly pointed out, we are grandparents now and we need to be in touch with how the younger generation is coping with life at home, school and in general.