Ben Akers: If you could prevent even one person from committing suicide, would you?

“I’ve done lots of challenging projects in my 20 or so years as a maker of things – but I think this will be the hardest. Steve is a documentary about my my childhood best friend.

He was happy, he was funny, he was normal. He was one of those people you just enjoyed being around. But on the 27th of May 2014 he took his own life. Steve was just one of 16 people who committed suicide that day in the UK.

And being male and between 35-55, he was one of the 3 in 4, who does this every day on average…”

This is the beginning of the story behind Steve, by Ben Akers:

Ben Akers lived in Sydney for 6 years and worked at Droga5, GPY&R before joining the behaviour change agency, Republic of Everyone. He has three children (the latest only 7 weeks old) and his eldest was born in Sydney.

He was the writer & director of the awarded documentary, Alex James: Slowing Down Fast Fashion.

And he was a best friend to Steve. Akers is making a film about Steve, in the hope that others don’t have to go through the same trauma as Steve and his family. The project is on Kickstarter. Want to help out?

Ben Akers

The story continues:

“Steve wasn’t a number. He was a father, a son, a brother, a husband. A friend.

But from the note he left, he didn’t feel like any of these. He felt lost.

So that’s why I’m making this film. To help other men – fathers, sons, brothers, husbands and friends – realise that no matter how bad things seem, they can get help.

Because they are important, they are loved, they are valued, they are needed.

Suicide is happening more and more as the pressures of modern being a modern man and doing it all get greater and greater. Of course, it’s happening with women as well. But women know how to talk, how to protect themselves better, that’s why so many suicides are male.

Most men don’t talk. Most men have grown up being told to “toughen up,” to “get on with it” and “just handle it” – “the broader the shoulders the bigger the man”.

We all know this is all bollocks. But we get sucked in. And think we can handle it.

So this disease sets in. It’s starts small – a bit of mild anxiety. But then that rolls into light depression. And depression is hard, because you go from light to dark and back to light again. You can never put your finder on it. If you have a headache, you take some paracetamol to get rid of it, but imagine that you don’t even know if you have a headache until it’s too late.

Before you know it, the black dog is with you and you can’t handle things rationally. And with cases like Steve, suicide seems to be an option. (How can suicide ever be an option?)

Then what’s left behind is a tsunami of disaster. Where loved ones, friends and colleague all asking, “Why?” And that person ends up as a statistic. One in 16 in Steve’s case.

Well I’m not happy with that any more.

I can’t change what happened with Steve, but we can try to stop the next person.

People have asked me if I blame myself – or to even stop blaming myself.

The answer is: “Yes of course I do.” People always think they could have done something to stop it. That’s just human reaction. Some of us might have been able to. With Steve and I, we’d drifted apart. He lived in Canada – I was in Oz – we talked on Facebook – but never saw each other. But from his messages and photos – everything was amazing. Well of course it was. That’s what people do. We pretend everything is OK, especially on social media. We’d talked about getting our families together when we both got back to the UK but that never happened.

I remember the moment I found out he had died. It has been burned into my brain for eternity. It was only weeks after my family and I had returned from Oz and I was in a coffee shop in Manchester.

I opened up my laptop and messages from Facebook, IM, and emails came flooding in.

“Ring me.” “Ring me it’s really important.” “It’s about Steve.” “RING ME!” They were all from Steve’s cousin and I obviously feared the worst.

A car crash, a mugging. Even cancer… I’ll be honest, I never expected suicide.

We never really know what is going on inside someone’s head. At the funeral, I found out that he’d been having trouble with anxiety and was struggling in Canada – so his return wasn’t his own choice.

Steve left a wife and two children (and an elder son from a previous relationship as well).

Three children who will always have this in their life story.

We all grow up with things that shape our lives. (My father was schizophrenic – but that’s another story.) And this film will be about positives about helping people find ways to help themselves.

So that when Steve’s family (or anyone) watches the final film they know that, although it’s the most horrific thing to happen to someone they love, coming together might actually do some good.

So if you’re called Steve. Know or love a Steve. Work or live next to a Steve. Or sit opposite one on your daily commute, then you should watch this this film.

Because Steve is in all of us.”