John Seccombe had regularly checked his skin and even had small cancers on his face removed, but nothing prepared him for the moment when the right side of his face went numb.
Key points:
Farmers older than 65 have a high risk of developing melanomas
8,032 people were diagnosed with melanomas in 2021
The number is expected to grow to more than 11,000 by 2030
He was a fair-skinned boy who grew up on a farm.
Later in life, he managed a cattle station and a feedlot at Gurly Station, south of Moree in north west New South Wales, before becoming the chair of Casino Food Co-op, the largest meat co-op in the country.
He was aware of the danger of skin cancers, regularly went to the dermatologist, and had a squamous cell carcinoma removed in his 30s.
But the disease returned, and this time, it was a “rampant” cancer that was heading into his brain stem, crushing a facial nerve.
According to his doctors, it was a death sentence.
“I had to under go radiation for two years, at the end of that it was still growing and they gave me 12 months to live and said ‘go home and hug your children’,” Mr Seccombe said.
Skin cancer death rates for farmers over 65 are double that of other Australians.(Supplied: John Seccombe)
That was 22 years ago.
Mr Seccombe was saved by radical experimental surgery that involved three operations on his face.
“I had to have three lots of craniotomies, where they enter your face through the skull base,” he said.
“They removed as much damaged tissue as they could but it left my right eye left in a precarious position so I had to have another one, removed my eye, and I basically lost the right side of my face.”
Check your skin
Melanomas can be extremely serious, but there are ways of identifying them.(Supplied: Melanoma Patients Association)
Mr Seccombe is now living on a farm on the north coast of New South Wales and is the chairman of Melanoma Patients Australia, a charitable organization that advocates and supports people diagnosed with melanoma.
He is urging men in regional and rural areas to check their own skin.
That is because the statistics in those parts of Australia, often a long way from the beach, are shocking.
The death rates in farmers over 65 from skin cancer are more than double the rate of other Australians, while the total disease burden rate in remote Australia is 1.4 times as high as in major cities.
And it is expected to get worse.
About 8,000 Australians in regional areas were diagnosed with melanoma last year, and that is forecast to rise to over 11,000 annually by 2030.
That is because the population is ageing, and men are twice as likely as women to die of melanoma due to complacency about sun safety, according to the Cancer Council.
The family of Canberra woman Brontë Haskins has asked the ACT coroner to make adverse findings about several people involved in her case before and after her suicide in 2020.
Key points:
Brontë Haskins, 23, took her own life in 2020 after suffering from substance abuse and mental illness
Her mother has called for the ACT coroner to find several people failed her before her death
The lawyer for Ms Haskins’s family says if she was triaged correctly she would have been assessed by a trained mental-health clinician
Ms Haskins, 23, died in hospital after several days on life support.
Her death came while she was on bail after a stint in jail for drug driving.
Ms Haskins had suffered both substance abuse and mental illness, something her mother said was not taken seriously enough by authorities.
In the lead-up to her death she had been staying at her mother’s home, while she was on bail.
A coronial inquest into Ms Haskins’s suicide heard her mother called police and mental health services when she became delusional, believing the unit where she was staying was a gas chamber.
Several issues have been raised in the case before the ACT Coroner’s Court, including the family’s claim that a mental-health nurse failed to give the case the priority it required and failed to follow up a call from Ms Haskins’s mother, Janine.
Lawyer Sam Tierney who represented Ms Haskins’s family referred to the staged triage system — where category A is the most serious, and category G requires more information — when criticizing the way the case was handled by mental-health nurse Karina Boyd.
The inquest heard Brontë Haskins’s case was not triaged correctly.(Supplied)
“Had Ms Boyd not incorrectly triaged Brontë as category G, Brontë would have more likely than not been assessed face to face by a trained mental-health clinician within 72 hours and certainly prior to her death,” Mr Tierney said.
Counsel assisting the coroner Andrew Muller also took aim at the way the case was triaged.
“Brontë should have been assessed as a category C or D, resulting in some urgent follow-up,” Mr Muller said.
“What is material is that, on any view of the available information, Brontë was incorrectly assessed for triage purposes.”
Mr Muller has recommended an overhaul of the triage system.
But in its submissions, the ACT defended Ms Boyd’s decision, saying she had not been able to speak to Ms Haskins and her only contact was with her mother.
“She had been told that the AFP had been called and she assumed that the police would contact her if they thought Brontë needed a risk assessment or mental-health service,” the territory submissions said.
Court hears CCTV footage of minutes before attempt to take life missing
Ms Haskins’s family have called for greater transparency in passing on confidential details after the death of a mental health service user to the Coroner’s Court.(Supplied)
Another key issue was the fact police returned a CCTV recorder to Brett French, an associate of Ms Haskins, at whose home she had tried to take her life.
The court heard about 45 minutes of footage which may have shed light on the events leading up to her death was deleted
Court documents showed Mr French had admitted showing some of the CCTV to another man.
Mr Tierney told the court the family wanted an adverse finding against Mr French for his “callous” treatment of Ms Haskins on the day of her death.
Mr Tierney also identified the behavior of police investigating the death as an issue.
“A proper investigation and analysis of the CCTV recorder may have disclosed further and important information to the coroner to assist in the process of considering Brontë’s death,” he said.
He has called for a recommendation that will send a message to the AFP about the handling of coronial exhibits.
The inquiry has also looked into the management of Ms Haskins’s case and whether further detention could have prevented her death.
Mr Muller said there was evidence of better communications about her could have helped.
“Had Brontë been stopped the outcome may, of course, have been different,” Mr Muller said.
“But there was no proper reason she could be stopped.”
Other recommendations being sought by Ms Haskins’s family include greater transparency in passing on to the Coroner’s Court confidential details after the death of a mental health service user, recording of calls to the mental health line, audits of the triage system, and better information to be passed to AFP officers called to incidents.
Coroner James Stewart said he would take some time to hand down his findings.
There’s no doubt having a baby is a life-changing event and while it’s well known many mothers struggle with depression or anxiety, so can fathers.
Perinatal anxiety and depression, from pregnancy through to a child turning one, affect up to one in five new mums and up to one in 10 new dads, according to Perinatal Anxiety & Depression Australia (PANDA).
A world-first online treatment program called Dadbooster aims to help fathers after their baby is born by reducing moderate to severe symptoms of postnatal depression.
A silent struggle
For Luke Rigby, the birth of his daughter Olive in 2018 marked the start of a mental health battle that left him struggling for almost a year until he was diagnosed.
Returning to work three weeks after Olive’s birth, the 27-year-old said he ignored early warning signs that something wasn’t right.
“I think I averaged a day off a week … I’d give myself a kick up the butt, but it would only last for probably a week or two and then it becomes like a self-replicating cycle,” he said.
His turning point came when he finally decided to visit his GP.
“I booked him for a 15-minute appointment, but I reckoned that lasted about 45 minutes,” he said.
“It was just me in his room sobbing and just the things that I was holding inside of me that I’ve never really said, even to myself, before they just came out … like a word vomit.”
Mr Rigby says he tries to spend as much quality time as he can with his four-year-old daughter.(Supplied: Luke Rigby)
Luke Rigby isn’t alone when it comes to dealing with peri- and postnatal depression and anxiety.
An increasing number of fathers report similar experiences.
Dadbooster to help fathers
Jeannette Milgrom, executive director of Melbourne’s Parent-Infant Research Institute (PIRI), said, through her research and development of treatment programs for women, it became apparent there was an obvious gap in treatment options for men.
“What we found is that this has not been addressed in the literature,” Professor Milgrom said.
“There have been some involvement of men and trials of providing education, but there hasn’t been any targeted treatment for depression in men.”
That’s about to change.
Jeannette Milgrom developed Dadbooster to help fill the void in treatment options for fathers with postnatal depression.(Supplied: Jeannette Milgrom)
Professor Milgrom and her team are working on a world-first specialized web-based treatment program for depressed or anxious fathers.
Dadbooster involves six sessions along with SMS messages, regular contact, advice and encouragement to keep motivated participants.
Changes in symptoms are also closely monitored.
Professor Milgrom said the treatment was comparable to face-to-face therapy and was modified to appeal to men.
“There’s similarities in the sense that the core treatment for depression is cognitive behavioral therapy… we’ve made it very easily accessible for men… it’s a very mobile, responsive program and it’s shorter and sharper,” she said.
‘Even rocks crumble’
Julie Borninkhof says more than one in 10 dads may experience perinatal depression.(Supplied: PANDA)
Australia’s mental health system to date has not been great at picking up on vulnerability in men, according to PANDA CEO Julie Borninkhof.
“Organizations like ours are really trying to break down the barriers and remind people that even rocks crumble,” Dr Borninkhof said.
“We don’t screen as readily and ask as many questions as we do of women… so the one in 10 is probably under-reported, because we also know that screening dads in the perinatal period is not as great as it is when we screen our mums.”
Dr Borninkhof said data collected through PANDA’s annual mental health checklist for expectant fathers had revealed some alarming data.
“There’s about 60 per cent of those that really do fear that they’re not going to be great dads,” she said.
Professor Milgrom said her research had identified the importance of giving a voice to the issue.
“Once men start hearing other men talking about it, it becomes very enabling to be able to share the experience and feel that it’s so common,” she said.
hanging out together
It’s a sentiment shared by Tom Docking, founder of Dads Group, an organization promoting positive parenting for men by combining dads, their kids, a cup of coffee and a playground.
Since establishing the Toowoomba chapter a few years ago, Mr Docking said getting fathers together with their children created a supportive environment.
Dads Group offers support to fathers around Australia.(Supplied: Tom Docking)
“From our research, it’s the presence of the child which helps to keep the focus on being better as a father, a partner, a community leader, and a benefit to himself and his own identity,” he said.
Mr Docking said the group was letting fathers know about Dadbooster and other services available.
“It’s important to realize that we can only do this together collaboratively to really address the needs of our community,” Mr Docking said.
For Mr Rigby, help from his GP and connecting with a local dads’ group gave him the support he needed.
Now, he shares his experience with others to raise awareness of perinatal and postnatal depression.
“My biggest bit of advice is to be radically honest with yourself … and ask the question about why you don’t feel 100 per cent and then go from there,” he said.
