Young Blood - Men’s Mental Health

Jack Brown is one of the guys running the trailblazing nationwide men's mental health charity #talk2mebro. It's an early intervention program underpinned by the ultimate aim of reducing suicide through informing and empowering men. The organisation was launched by Jack's friend, Kristy Hajjar, following the loss of her husband and Jack's cousin, Matt, to suicide. Jack's world was flipped upside do...

  Deep down the singer song-writer has never felt good enough, always doing his best to cover up his insecurities and hide his true self.    Tim's grappled with a sex addiction in a never ending quest for validation and knows what it's like to become detached from who you really are.   Tim says light is found in the darkness and wants those going through it to believe life...

Matt Caruana is a man in his early twenties who's had to show astounding spirit to survive and inspire. Matt put himself in a wheelchair from attempting suicide as a teenager... It was the end result of years of build up which saw him struggle constantly with his mental health from the age of 12. Matt used to feel so worthless that all he could think about was throwing his life away...now all he t...

Jaxon Tippet is a model, influencer and podcaster who's always wanted to be the man...   Throughout much of his life, image meant everything to Jaxon and he was willing to go to extreme lengths for the sake of public perception, even if it meant compromising his health.    Jaxon's life revolved around the intense use of steroids from the age of 18, until it caused him majo...

Ryan Waite is a Youth Worker who spends most of his days sharing his life experience to help guide young men in a positive direction. Just 25, Ryan has survived more hardship than most. After his mother passed away when he was 11, Ryan's dad descended into alcoholism and became abusive, forcing Ryan to move out of home with his brother as a teen. Ryan battled with anxiety and depression and even a...

Zac Cannell is a transgender man who lived the first 25 years of his life as a woman. Zac felt like he didn't belong in his body from a young age and it made growing into adulthood very confusing. Fortunately, he was supported by his family when he came out, but the same can't be said for everybody. Research shows people in the LGBTIQ+ community experience a disproportionately high rate of mental...

Nic Bloom is a mental health trainer and speaker who lives to hit the message home to young people. Nic witnessed his mum's mental health struggles throughout his youth and was fascinated by the problem he couldn't fix... He was there for a close friend throughout his 20's, who ultimately died by suicide after years of distress, a tragedy that's had an immense impact. The last 24 months has been a...

Brendan Walsh is an adventure athlete who holds the Guinness World Record for the Fastest Crossing of America By Bicycle, one of the great feats of endurance he’s taken on in the name of raising mental health awareness. Brendan’s just published a book, 'For Those Who Can't', chronicling his remarkable journey from his long struggle with mental illness and suicidal ideation, to taking on the world...

Damien Rider is a multiple world record holding adventure and extreme sports athlete and a world renowned wellness and mindset coach.  This man recently skydived off the top of a hot air balloon at 7 and a half thousand feet - he’s pushed a 3 tonne truck down the Gold Coast highway - skateboarded for 56 days through the Mojave desert and completed an entire marathon carrying a mattress on his...

Corey Boutwell is a very different man to who he was not all that long ago… These days Corey’s a professional fitness model, a high performance coach and a content creator dedicated to building and promoting all aspects of health. But when he was 16 he was diagnosed with depression and spent much of his teenage years in a fog.  Things spiraled in his early twenties when Corey found himself un...

Sam Koslowski is co-founder of The Daily Aus, Australia’s leading social-first news service, delivering news geared towards a younger audience with an emphasis on positivity. Sam broke away from the the path he was on, feeling like he was playing a role that wasn’t right for him, working as a corporate lawyer and hating it. As someone with his own history of anxiety, the constant negativity and fe...

For decades, Matt Sinkovitz had a porn addiction that hung over his life like a dark cloud, until he found the tools and the discipline to master his compulsion.  Now Matt’s on a mission to help men everywhere end their damaging relationship with porn and get their lives back.  He’s adopted Buddhism and uses meditation, mindfulness and purpose to help men break free of the habits that hold us back...

Dr Zac Seidler is a psychologist, a leading mental health expert and the Director of Mental Health Training at Movember. Zac has dedicated his career to better understanding men’s mental health and building programs to reshape how clinicians approach working with men in distress. Zac and Movember’s goal is to reduce the male suicide rate by 25% by 2030. How we create a world with less suicide is h...

Dylan Conway is the creator of 'Brothers N Books', an Instagram community based on sharing lived experience stories that’s on a mission to make reading cool. Dylan got hooked on books while he was stuck in hospital for over a year recovering from an unlikely condition. Reading gave Dylan something constructive to when he desperately needed it. Unable to work on his body like he always had,...

Arman Vestad is Young Blood’s first international guest, hailing all the way from Norway. He’s been a drug addict, a dealer and all round criminal who was in the game for a decade till he did time in prison after being caught supplying guns used in a murder…   Arman was lost and hopeless till someone showed faith in him and gave him a chance to apply the skills he’d developed in the underworld to...

Happy World Mental Health Day! This is a story for anyone who’s ever felt like a fish out of water with nowhere to go and no one to talk to...   Jahin Tanvir is just starting his twenties and he’s already a multi award winning youth advocate, policy advisor and keynote speaker - a man living out his passion, giving a voice to those who deserve to be heard.   A first generation migrant wh...

Jordan Hackett is a Sexologist and Men's Sex Coach who specialises in helping men build intimacy and connection with themselves and their partners. Like many of us growing up; Jordan didn't know the first thing about how to communicate with girls and felt like he was missing out on a part of life he had a deep need to experience.  After discovering porn as an outlet for his frustrations befor...

Today is World CML (chronic myeloid leukaemia) Day. CML is a rare form of blood cancer that just over 300 Australians are diagnosed with each year. In 2019, Michael Bowen was one of them...   He was on his way to work one day when he got an urgent call to come into the emergency department. Minutes later his life changed in an instant when he was suddenly hit with the diagnosis. The man of th...

Jack Nagle was a nice, middle class kid from a supportive, loving family. Not the background befitting the stereotype of the kind of people who destroy their lives on drugs…but that didn’t matter.   Jack ended his teens and started his twenties as the most hardcore drug addict imaginable and the fact he’s lived to tell the tale defies all probability.   Shooting up ice and heroin and swallowing fi...

Dan Pronk served 4 tours of Afghanistan as a Special Operations doctor, spending many days saving and losing fellow soldiers through more than 100 combat missions. Dan, his brother Ben and veteran, Tim Curtis, have just released their book, ‘The Resilience Shield’ - A mix of enthralling stories and practical instructions breaking down methods we can all use to build genuine resilience. Dan thrived...

Nick Bracks just published his first book 'Move Your Mind' - it's both his personal story of struggling with mental health throughout his life and a guide on how we can better equip ourselves to handle the challenges inevitably coming our way, all based on countless conversations with experts, advocates and every day people he's had over the past decade.   The son of the former Premier of Victoria...

Shane Mitchell is one of Australia's most dangerous men in the octagon with a 12 and 4 professional Mixed Martial Arts record.   In the cage he's known for his savage knockout power...not what anyone expected from a shy kid growing up without much confidence in Adelaide's northern suburbs...   Shane's been a pro fighter since 2013 and now touching 30, he's still grinding to realise his dream of ma...

Matt Morris is the chair of the South Australian Rainbow Advocacy Alliance, working for the rights of the LGBTIQ community.   Matt realised he was bisexual/pansexual in his teens, but it took him years to work up the courage to come out. Fortunately his sexuality was accepted by his friends and family but that hasn’t been the case for others he knows.   Matt’s always felt called to help those who...

When it comes to Aussie culture, punting has traditionally been right up there with having a cutla cold ones, watching the footy and chucking snags on the barby... In fact, 39% of Aussies gamble on a regular basis and Australia leads the world in gambling losses per capita, totaling around $25 billion per year. The pokies do the most damage overall, but in recent years the percentage of young men...

Nathan Bolton is a former soldier who served two tours of Afghanistan as a Special Operations Engineer in the Australian Special Forces. His primary objective was to find and clear improvised explosive devices planted across the battlefield by the enemy and it led to him to coming within literally an inch of death. Surviving such horror caused Nathan significant trauma, but he didn't know it at th...