Yes Tanveer, and it's likely to get a lot worse before it gets better.
It's a bit like homophobia, seriously declining, when almost everyone has or remembers a friend or relative who is/was inadvertently affected through no fault of their own; and or, the subject of completely unjustified imposed isolation, shame or humiliation?
Then perhaps this terrible tide will turn and effective remedial action taken, by a national Govt., rather than the few hard working stalwarts!
Rhrosty.

Tanveer - although the article has some interest basically you're missing several big pieces of the argument. First off, employment may be declining but its still only gradual to date. The closures you refer to are unfortunate, and a problem for specific regions, they do not amount to much nationally. (They also haven't happened yet, please note.)The real problem is that these adjustments should have occurred long ago when the economy was in better shape to absorb those who will be made unemployed.

You refer to youth unemployment. Yes, the unemployment rate among younger people is higher than the national average which is always the case and will always continue to be so. The real problem is older, unskilled workers who fall out of the workforce where that workforce has basically moved on, leaving few blue-collar jobs, particularly in Aus outside the mining sector.

As your link makes clear this is part of a major shift in the economy, but I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about those left out of the shift. The PM's money would do very little. Those workers have to up-skill themselves somehow, but they usually are not equipped to do that.. difficult..

Tanveer unfortunately you are a prime part of the problem.

You tell us of an explosion in "disability pension is related to mental health". Now government pay these people, where previously they would have been told to buck up & get on with it.

This is not just in your area of course, but through out every area. We have government supporting a rapidly growing percentage of the population, in all areas. They may be welfare recipients, health care workers, bureaucrats or what ever, but it is all increasing rapidly.

The government is now taking such a large slice of the pie to do all this, that there is not enough left for the productive sector, who are paying for it.

Companies can no longer make a profit with the huge wage bill. Workers can no longer live adequately on that "huge" wage. After the government has finally got its hand out of the poor buggers pocket, there is not enough left for them to live on. Hence they then demand government help.

Where the UK lived off it's North Sea oil, as Norway still does, & we have lived off our mining boom, without these rich prizes, governments are trying to do too much. You just have to look at the Mediterranean basket cases to see where this leads.

It would be almost amusing to hear even more calls for government spending, if it weren't so pitiful. God only knows if there is any answer, other than to have a catastrophe as in the Mediterranean, then go back to self reliance.

What ever the answer is, it is sure going to hurt.

Manufacturing has been declining in this country for around forty years.
Industrial dinosaurs, not able to think outside the box, have off-shored or sold out to foreign concerns.
Ford is arguably closing down, because it is a foreign owned entity, with a board, with a foreign based agenda?
We are also hamstrung by successive Govt., and an endlessly repeated mindless mantra, that Govt., has no business in business!
That nonsense pure and simple, is just ideological constipation!?
I mean, no Government owner of a corporation, actually runs the business!
But just like any other majority shareholder, relies on competent corporate executives and an entirely independent board!
It's just a mealy mouthed cop out!?
Or an excuse not to do anything that might make a real difference?
The answer to this slow drift or death by a thousand cuts, is genuine and long over tax reform and quite massive simplification.
i.e, a stand alone entirely unavoidable expenditure tax, set at just 4.8%, would raise more revenue, repair the current structural deficit, and create almost endless surpluses, and give Govt. a brand new and vastly more effective means to control inflation!
Simplification that could render the ATO and almost every tax practitioner entirely redundant.
Arguably all that prevents its imposition!?
A vastly simplified tax system, would remove the need for tax compliance, thereby adding around 7% to the averaged bottom line.
The associated repeal of virtually all other tax measures, would increase margins even more!
After that, the profitable provision of publicly owned energy, at vastly lower costs than the private model, would have the high tech corporations of the world queuing to relocate here!
We could supply that energy, via thorium, cheaper than coal; and NG powered solid state ceramic fuel cells, with an energy coefficient of around 72%, which is more than three times better than coal fired power.
Or put another way, more than three times cheaper!
Thorium produces no carbon pollution and very little waste!
Whereas, NG powered fuel cells, produce the world's cheapest electricity, free hot water and mostly water vapour as exhaust!
Rhrosty.

I started reading this in a braced position, waiting for the inevitable 'men under threat in an increasingly feminised world' tropes to be trotted out yet again.

But wait ... there was nothing in the first paragraph. Wa-hoo! Or the second or the third. I got right down to number 10. And no blaming of women.

Oh joy, oh bliss!

Oh, rats ...

There it was. Paragraph 11. The great big 'F' word. And it went rapidly downhill from there.

Thank you, at least, Rhrosty, for pointing out the real (i.e. non-women) issues that are screwing men big time, virtually all of them emanating from other men - i.e. the rich, powerful ones who are quite happy to screw poor, powerless men to suit their own agenda, and the governments that let them get away with it.

And Hasbeen, before its financial sector collapse, the social welfare budget per capita for Greece was second lowest in the European Union, but its military budget per capita was the highest. Go figure.

An excellent observation from the Men's Shed movement and Dr Ahmed, but it doesn't go far enough.

Men frequently value themselves by their capacity to self-determine, what they contribute to the greater good and by the estimation of others. If they are entirely beholden to others for support, have no means of contributing usefully and they are not well-regarded within the group to which they belong, then they react in various self-protective ways.

They may become aggressively dismissive of others, making themselves a society of one. They may become depressed and listless, embodying the qualities which they perceive as others' judgement of them. They may become violent, displaying their strength and fearlessness, as a demonstration of their virility. They may choose to just leave, whether quietly and without fuss, or with a flamboyant last hurrah. In that last response is also included those who leave completely by taking their own lives.

Our nation has changed immensely over the past couple of generations, both industrially and culturally. Men have been expected to cope with that change and to willingly embrace and encourage it, with nothing in it for them but denigration and a loss of any sense of self-direction.

Beyond Blue has a new campaign which was promoted by Jeff Kennett in a segment on the morning show. It is a purportedly humourous ad which features the character "Dr Ironwood" and it doesn't improve from there, saying that men need "courage" to seek help with psychological problems, that they should "get their sh!t together", that talking about their "deep fried feelings" will make them happy. It's a cringeingly awful piece of contemptuous denigration, perpetuating the image of man as cowardly, incoherent, disorganised boofhead, while Kennett told us with a straight face that men should become more like women in order to avoid mental health issues. Apparently the fact that women attempt suicide at greater rates than men (but less competently) is a sign of their emotional stability in Jeffworld.

[cont]

I had a short discussion to that effect with Steve in which I pointed out, just as this article does, that the problem is not that men feel bad, it's that they have a REASON to feel bad thanks to cultural and economic change which has promoted the role of women in public life, (for every 3 women employed, 2 men have lost their jobs since the late 70s)and reduced the role of men to that of support act, while constantly reinforcing the message that men are bad by nature and women intrinsically good, so putting women into positions of power is an essential national priority. On the afternoon drive show the ad was rolled out again, this time accompanied by a young fellow who regaled us with the tale of how he had become anxious (he knew what it was because his dad's a psychiatrist) after he had failed in his attempt to walk to the North Pole, but he pulled himself together and tried again and failed again and he only succeeded after he realised it was his anxiety holding him back. What an inspiration! Oops, spelling mistake... I meant prat!

Beyond Blue is promoting this campaign as "Man Therapy" (always said in a mocking tone, as is only right when you're talking to defective specimens who lack the courage to talk about their problems to anybody who can't escape) implying that puerility is needed to engage male interest but I'm more concerned that by putting the focus on the symptom they are deliberately ignoring the cause.

The Feminist movement has a lot of blood on its hands, but it is only in the current ascendancy because it was allowed to develop as a means of increasing the labour pool without increasing population, an economic goal.

What do the ladies think? Has it been worth it? Is being free to go to work worth the obligation of having to? Is a life free of the "controlling" influence of men worth the shallow satisfaction of self-gratification?

Killarney what name you put on it really doesn't matter, but retiring public servants at 55 on a comfortably livable pension, may not show up in the welfare figures, but that is exactly what it is, just by a different name.

Having defense force personal on full pay, not required to report for duty for years is simple welfare in the form of make believe military jobs.

It may be all Greek to us, but it certainly was not cricket, & sooner or later someone had to pay. Pity it appears that it is going to be the youth, the only ones who don't deserve to.

A reasonable article right up until the last paragraphs, as Killarney pointed out.
It's those damn feminists at it again, destroying a previously joyous man's world.

Then we have Antiseptic predictably wading in to blame women for all men's problems......again.

The Men's Sheds certainly have been a help for some of the many retired, disabled or unemployed men around the country.

All this is very well if you are into 'making things with your hands'.
In our town, the shed only caters for a few blokes who are 'handy'.
What of the poor guys that haven't been particularly handy, or have no wish to bang nails into wood or repair bikes or whatever?

Surely we can come up with more initiatives to cater for a wider variety of men?
Men just like to be with other men on a regular basis, but if you are retired, disabled or unemployed , then money is a problem.

Regular, low cost, bring your own type social get-togethers, where a variety of fun activities could be planned, would surely not be too expensive.

And we could have someone at the door to keep all feminists out...

I don't think it is just men who are suffering (although I don't want to dismiss their problems in any way). I see it as a wider societal problem, which I think of as extreme capitalism. Traditional capitalism served the community. Under extreme capitalism we all serve the corporation. The casualisation of the workforce, enforced part-time, under employment are all damaging to the health of the community. Who doesn't know young people who have given up on ever owning a home; retail workers who don't know what hours they will be offered from week to week; graduates who can't find permanent jobs and continue to live at home. The two driving forces seem to be corporate profit and ever lower prices. People don't get a look in. No wonder anxiety and depression are so widespread.

Suse, I don't blame women, who are suffering in the grip of the same forces that men are. We've all been conditioned to act as though there is a natural competitiveness between the genders through the constant emphasis of difference instead of commonalities. It's dysfunctional for everyone.

Feminism is an economic tool to increase the amount of consumption by redistributing money into their hands and thereby increasing their disposable income. It's been a raging success in those terms, as the terms of trade demonstrate, with Australian imports of consumerist products increasing at a rate far greater than the increase in domestic productivity, but proportional to the increase in women's direct control of disposable funds due to the social policies that derive from "Feminist theory" which is itself a derivation of Marx's economic analysis.

It's not about making women "more equal", they were already "first among equals" in every way that counts. They've had to trade that position to become mere economic units, mostly providing the same actual services or services that fill the same functional role that they provided as part of the domestic contract but now those services are part of the economic system and can be exploited by those who have capital. As well, by splitting couples into two singles, there is a net increase in the demand for functional domestic goods because there are two households to furnish.

In other words, female workforce participation has not added to the happiness of the female population any more than the male one. The main difference in the psychlogical impacts has been caused by the fact that men are no longer treated as a necessary part of families, so we are struggling with primal drives that we have no way to satisfy, not an urge to control, but an urge to nurture. Our best natures have been characterised as damaging to the very people we are driven to want to protect. Women's functional role as carers for children has not been interfered with, so they have not suffered in the same way.

Great outcome, eh?

Beyond Blue's social purpose is to try to find a way to make people who are struggling and failing to make sense of the lack of any meaning in their lives because of the social reorganisation that has displaced them from their children and devalued their whole gender's role stop killing themselves. That is itself an expression of the standard male response of leaving the tribe when there is no role for them, but since there is nowhere to go, they "leave" by suicide. The "Man therapy" campaign is not for the good of men, it's simply another exercise in corporatising a functional role that used to be a domestic one and it emphasises separation of the genders as part of that. It's a tawdry exercise in papering over cracks created by a collapsing foundation to disguise the fact that it is being deliberately undermined. It can have no genuine success as long as there is no social value in being a man and especially in being a father.

That will persist as long as we remain in the grip of corporate capital, which is driven only to increase money flows and engineers social change to channel the flow. It is only interested in the effects on people when they threaten to impede the flow.

Jeff Kennett's entire career has been in the creation of consumerism and all of his associations are with corporate interests. Why would anyone think that a successful manipulator of emotion in the service of advertising to create consumer demand, who's Government was defined by its socially manipulative policies designed to reduce impedances to the flow of money, would suddenly develop a burning desire to help people who are depressed? Beyond Blue exists to bolster the process of turning society from a means of making children into a means of making money by cleaning up some of the mess created.

Jeff Kennett and his organisation are no more than corporate shills.

Jeff Kennett's involvement has always tarnished Beyond Blue in my eyes. He is a man who would have caused more depression and anxiety through his aggressive politics than he could ever help to address through Beyond Blue, which he only became interested in after he had suffered depression himself. Before that, he exhibited no interest in anyone's mental welfare. Remember when he refused to have anything to do with the ABC and SBS? Fair enough, his choice, but I will never forget his behaviour at a press event which involved planting a tree, a spade and a heap of soil: Kennett picked up a shovel of soil and upended it over the SBS camera operator crouching beside the tree. I think he also laughed. That is the Kennett in my head whenever his name crops up.

Antiseptic, I agree that the role of both genders has certainly changed in our society now.
Women are now expected to be everything in the family...expected to work full time , care for the kids full time, be there for their husband full time, and be cheerful about it all full time.

Men's roles are changing too. They are expected to do the same as the women, but are not so good at multi-tasking. Both genders are struggling and blame each other for their woes.

The guilt that mum's have about leaving the kids to go out and work is as bad as the guilt that men have for not being able to provide enough money so the women can stay home and look after the kids. Naturally, many mothers want to work outside the home, but I doubt many want to be away from the kids as much as they have to.

Depression and suicide amongst men is by no means only among men who have had relationship breakdowns. Both the depressed men in my family appear to be in happy marriages. Financial or work related problems seem to be a huge catalyst.

We all need to watch out for each other and note any changes in behaviour.
Ask each other 'Are you ok?' on a regular basis.
Don't be afraid to ask for and seek help if you feel sad or have dark thoughts.
It's such an awful place to be in...I know, I have been there too...

Anti,

I have to agree with your posts.

It seems Beyond Blue is attempting to find a way for people to cope in a society with a warped foundation, one that is only designed to produce consumers.

We can't have our cake and eat it too.

Taking of men's role in society.

I've mentioned this before, but I once watched a program where the women in an African village got jack of the males (who apparently were not puling their weight in any practical sense at the time) and decided to go off and build their own village. They did so, taking the children with them - and they seemed to get along just fine.

The cameras went back to the old village which now contained only men. They appeared stultified. They just sat around talking - there was nothing for them to do. The women's village was thriving full of life, animated personalities and creativity - and the men's village appeared to be dead, except for men sitting around doing nothing.

I assume it was only a short-term arrangement, but the effect on the men of having nothing left to defend was disastrous. Even the look in their eyes seemed devoid of purpose.

Suse, financial and employment issues are relationship issues, or will soon turn into them. Men are very aware that the domestic contract is now implicitly conditional and that if they become unemployed they may well become divorced.

I hope things improve for them, it's a rotten place to be.

Poirot, I read about that village too. I sympathise with the women's motives, since the men were really taking the p!ss, but as you say, the effect on the men was to leave them adrift with no purpose.

The simple fact is that in terms of reproducing the species, which is the main purpose of living, there are too many men. In more primitive times and cultures where warfare and infection and disease were a big killer of men there were far fewer and women still managed to become pregnant. Too many males without enough to do is a problem situation and one we have to do something about, because bored men with no purpose cause trouble and become depressed. At the moment it's still largely a problem confined to low SES areas, where it is entrenched and containing the trouble costs lots of resources, as does repairing the damage. Perhaps our society will take it seriously enough to do something real about it when the unemployed former public-servant husbands of middle-class public servants who didn't lose their part time job when he lost his full-time one start topping themselves in numbers?