It is a great pleasure to be here. I'm very thankful to Beyondblue for the invitation.

I have been invited here to share my personal experience both as a consumer and as a manager working in HR in business.

In my previous corporate life I worked in the field of Industrial Relations Advocacy and HR Management. Three years ago, I started to come off the rails. There was a trigger, a family loss that was so enormously overwhelming in its grief that the rest of us all have subsequently had severe health problems.

My employer and my managers at the time were incredibly supportive and giving. For that I'm forever grateful for their kindness.

However, our tragedy continued and we continued to be affected. I had no insight of my health unravelling. I knew I was tired. I knew I was stressed. But I rationalised with myself that it would pass. I kept telling myself to focus and hold on and over time I would be fine. 

I worked longer hours to keep up as I fought the mind traffic. I could still work. Not as effectively as before. But if I put in the long hours and slogged through it, I was able to compensate for my reduced productivity.

I wasn't getting any better.  In fact I was getting worse. Increasingly stressed, that's what I put it down to.  But I kidded myself that by meeting and exceeding my responsibilities, at least at work, I was in control.

I had previously been a cynic of the employee assistance program, however I did go out of sheer desperation.

Not limited to 3 sessions, I periodically went for a year before I was told I was depressed. I was told I had to go easier on myself.  I wasn't advised about treatment and no suggestion was made about going to a doctor.

Finally, after around two years, I crashed. Quite literally.  I collapsed outside my workplace. I felt so physically ill that I thought I was dying.

Then, almost an overnight recovery, at least in relative terms, compared to the two year nightmare before because I went to a GP that understood.

I've responded well to treatment and I believe I've benefited equally well from becoming informed. Diagnosis enables treatment, both medical and psychological. And I needed both.

If I couldn't see what was happening to me, how could my employer? 

As it happened, my employer did see it. I can remember several comments made to me. One previous manager said in passing that I always looked as if I carried the weight of the world on my shoulders. People commented on how intense I was. Several times I was told I looked too ill to be at work. A couple of times my boss good heartedly threatened he'd arrange for security to escort me from the building.

I believe the symptoms were visible to those around me although their comments weren't sufficiently clear to be of any help. On the contrary I tried harder to cope and to hide my distress.

And so when I finally did crash and was diagnosed, did I tell my employer?

No I didn't. I went along with the assumption by one of my colleagues that I had a bad flu. 

As the treatment started to pull me out and my brain started to lift out of the fog I was worried my position would be precarious. I worried I would be considered weak. I felt my reliability and credibility would be questioned. My last manager had made a few ignorant - not discriminatory but insensitive - comments about an employee we knew to have depression.

In the past, perhaps we have not known enough to be able to appropriately see and respond to mental illness in the workplace. Ignorance can no longer be an excuse. It's not enough to say mental illness can't be seen like physical injuries.  By being informed, by receiving some relative basic training on the symptoms, behaviours that result from mental illness very much can be seen and responded to.

During my last role as an HR Director, a number of employees that were brought to me by their manager as performance problems, with the education I have received on mental health,  I recognised in them symptoms that suggested the possibility of problems like depression or anxiety. There were also people outside of work. 

Both in and out of work, I was quite direct and raised the possibility of depression or anxiety and suggested a check up with their GP.

It may seem as if I was close to stomping on the line of privacy. Yet in only one case did the person not appreciate what I'd said. She later wrote a letter to her manager acknowledging that we were right, but that she couldn't see it at the time.

The other eight or so cases were receptive and showed relief that we understood something of what was going inside of them.

We're at a tipping point of opportunity. Whilst there is still much not known about mental illness there is an incredible amount that we do know.

The workplace is an incredibly important avenue for us as a community to recognise and understand mental illness.

Other sectors already know so much. It's not hard to make that knowledge available to workplaces as long as organisations open the door to realise the opportunity.

When our workplaces stretch their understanding and open their eyes to depression and other mental illness, the accompanying benefits for our people, our community and the workplace will be nothing short of staggering.