Tony Hodder is part of the Wingman Support Solutions team, setting out to help tackle the unique barriers that young people face to accessing mental health support.
Despite a vast majority of mental health issues developing in young people, Mr Hodder says that many traditional services aren’t equipped with the tools to address these barriers our youth are facing.
“In one word: what is mental health? Behaviour.” said Mr Hodder, founder of Wingman. “Mental health is about the questions to feel and see the logic in your own answers.”
According to Mr Hodder, everyone will suffer from a mental health issue at some point in their lives, as we all love someone and something, and everything comes to an end one day, for us all.
Coming from humble beginnings, and experiencing social anxiety from a young age, Mr Hodder was determined not to let his upbringing define him, or who he wanted to become. However, for Mr Hodder, he was introduced to [mental health] for the first time 10 years ago, when he moved back to Australia.
“My partner and I became a blended family and we were having our first child together, I was financially secure, I was purchasing my own business, I was at the top of my life, the happiest I had ever been,” he said.
“But it only lasted five minutes.”
Following complications during birth due to a systematic error at the hands of the hospital, Mr Hodder lost his daughter Bella.
“It took us to a different place, where there was a lot of suffering, it was really really hard,” he said. “My whole life just fell apart, we split the family up, I was self-sabotaging, I lost my business, lost everything, to the point of being homeless.
“But at the same time I was seeking help, going to counselling, and in some sense it helped. I spent the hours with the counsellor, and I felt good within that hour, but I would have to wait two weeks until the next appointment to feel that again.”
Focused only on making the hospital accountable and seeking justice for his daughter’s death, Mr Hodder said he felt everyone was moving on with their lives, and he couldn’t.
“It drove me to the point of suicide…and I decided to end my life,” he said. “I went to drive off the bridge, but..what popped through my unconscious mind was that ‘I can’t swim’, and the next thought was ‘It’s cold, I don’t really want to be cold’.
“Because I caught that thought, I pulled over [the car] and analysed it. I thought, if I’m trying to kill myself, why would I care about being cold or being able to swim?”
From that moment, Mr Hodder started asking: “how do I help myself?” and realised with counselling that it is identifying behaviours. Mr Hodder informed me that he thought that there has to be a better way, and decided to relocate back to the Gold Coast with the kids, to “unify, come back, and change my career”. Mr Hodder also asked himself the question: How could I make a pathway going into community work?
After spending 20 years in the hospitality industry managing bars, Mr Hodder changed careers and began work in Mental Health and Residential care: a passion to help others ignited by loss.
“I started studying people’s behaviour and I was naturally good at it, especially with young people and extreme behaviors,” Mr Hodder said.
Extending his motivation towards work in the Social sector, Mr Hodder spent 10 years helping Australia’s troubled youth and researching mental health.
Rediscovering himself and his purpose, Wingman Support Solutions was born. Mr Hodder aspires to share his story and empower others with knowledge, in the hope that they too can use these tools to make positive changes to their own mental health.
“True self-awareness is understanding all your conscious behaviour before you choose how to react and respond,” he said. “Reverse engineering is a process to go within to understand how to choose to overcome, to project out how you want to feel.
“Wingman is all about how to choose to overcome pain now, by managing how to become accountable in the present moment.”
