RESPECTED artist and Suicide Prevention Australia ambassador Mic Eales shared his experiences at the Lived Experience Symposium in Sydney on Tuesday.
Eales works in a studio on a five-hectare farm in Mallanganee, west of Lismore.
His works are intended to trigger conversation about suicide. It is a subject he is qualified to talk about.
"I made two attempts as a teenager,'' he said.
"One when I was 15, and another one when I was 18, and then sort of got my life together a bit but suffered from suicide ideation for a number of years.
"Then, in 2002, my brother took his own life but I didn't find out. He took his own life in May and I didn't find out until September. His partner decided to ring me up and say that Bryan had taken his own life.
"My immediate reaction was, 'the bastard, he succeeded and I failed'.
"I turned that around pretty quickly and rationalised that he was the one who didn't reach out for help. I was lucky enough to have survived the suicide attempts.
"Within six months, I became suicidal again and all of my issues just bubbled to the surface.''
Eales planned to take his life when he was at university studying art but then started seeing a psychologist and counsellor.
"They were asking me questions and I was avoiding them, and I then started making the artworks about my own experience of suicide,'' he said.
"I needed to find some life-affirming quality.''
For his PhD, Different Voice Different Perspective, he printed his thesis on pianola scrolls.
''The reason behind that is that I see people's lives as a piece of music and the perforations are a bit like the markings that fate bestows upon us,'' he said.
"I wrote the numbers one through to 3000 in crayon over the length of four scrolls. The reason for that is that 3000 people a day worldwide take their own lives.''
Asked how his life is now, Eales does not hesitate to answer.
"Me? I'm terrific,'' he said. "I'm married, two kids and feel I have accomplished something in my life.
"Just because I have undertaken a PhD and talk with Suicide Prevention Australia it doesn't just mean my suicidality has just gone away magically.
"I still suffer from suicide ideation. It's not something that will go, I don't think. I hope it does.''
The Lived Experience Symposium brought together about 25 people with lived experience of suicide to help shape suicide prevention research, policy and services.
Visit suicidepreventionaust. org/project/lived-experience-network