Today is the 28th birthday of my brother, Abdul Hadi 🙂 I’ve been very blessed to have him in my life. He was my roommate in Jordan, we went to Syria together with our brother Ahmad, and he was my very patient Hajj buddy in 2010.
My brother has courageously stepped up and volunteered for the City2Surf in order to raise funds for the Black Dog Institute. You can find his page here and you can learn more about the Black Dog Institute by clicking here.
Mental illness is a lot more common than most people think. Check out some surprising points from this Black Dog Institute fact sheet:
One in five (20%) Australians aged 16-85 experience a mental illness in any year.
65% of people with mental illness do not access any treatment [3,4]. This is worsened by delayed treatment due to serious problems in detection and accurate diagnosis. The proportion of people with mental illness accessing treatment is half that of people with physical disorders [4].
Rates of depression are slightly higher in women with depression, affecting one in six (17%) compared to one in 10 (10%) men experiencing depression in their lifetime. Across both sub-types, bipolar disorder affects around one in 33 (3%) men and women in their lifetime [1]. However, prevalence of bipolar disorder is probably higher than the statistics suggest, as many cases are often undetected or misdiagnosed.
Please donate to my brother’s fundraising cause, and help him raise funds for an institute which has helped to save so many lives. The Black Dog Institute is working hard to minimise the impact of mental illness, and maybe even one day, prevent them from developing in the first place.
Raidah Shah Idil 