Men’s Mental Health Month 2026: ‘He thought he was a burden’: Gold Coast man’s mission after losing best friend to suicide

Gold Coast local Casey Lyons lost his best friend Dwayne Lally committed suicide in 2013.

Dwayne was only 25, and Casey was one of the few people who knew about his struggle and had watched him suffer in silence from his late teens.

“I’m looking at some photos of him at the moment and I remember him the same way: the person who was a lover of life, bold and loyal,” Casey told nine.com.au.

“He was the person who always went out of his way to make sure other people had a good time.”

The pair met in Year 1, and despite being placed in separate classes in Year 3, they maintained their friendship, including playing rugby together. Sam Webb completed their unique friendship group.

It was during his late teens that Casey said Dwayne began to struggle with mental ill health.

“Dwayne and I were close and we shared everything, so I was aware of it early on,” he said.

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“Some of his other close friends and his mother, his whole family, were aware of it.”

Dwayne would eventually lose his battle when he was 25

“I still get emotional now. It’s been 13 years in September,” Casey said.

“I think about Dwayne’s journey and some of the conversations we had, and without going into details, he thought he was a burden and he thought the world would be a better place without him.

‘And often these were his words. He thought he was a lunatic.”

Looking back, Casey thinks early education about mental health may have helped his friend understand that there were many people like him who were struggling with mental illness and feeling like they didn’t belong, and he knew he wasn’t alone.

“We definitely did physical education, a little sex education, but never talked about mental health, which is why we started LIVIN.”

Casey and Sam joined forces to launch LIVIN in 2013 after the loss of their friend. They wanted to encourage others to speak out about mental health issues after seeing Dwayne suffer in silence. 

“I visited Dwayne in the hospital and it was quite a draw at that stage because we just wanted to avoid people feeling like Dwayne and joining Dwayne under certain circumstances,” Casey recalls.

“It originally started as a clothing company raising money. That quickly turned into donating money to the local Headspace, they do great work.

“But we also knew there was still a gap when people couldn’t access Headspace due to a lack of education.”

Casey said the unique challenges in treating men’s mental health remain the same.

“We can’t see ourselves showing our emotions or being soft. It’s not a personality trait, but it’s more of a script that we’ve passed down from generation to generation,” Casey said.

‘That fear of looking weak in front of your friends, your partner or your boss.

“Another aspect of that is that we can be quite emotionally unintelligent. We call it stress, a bad week or being flat, but we don’t have the language because no one has taught us how to use it.

“That’s exactly what we started doing at LIVIN: ‘It’s not weak to speak.’”

LIVIN’s long-term goal is to see a future where suicide is no longer one of the leading killers of young Australians.

More than a decade later, that message has grown far beyond its beginnings, with LIVIN now working in schools, workplaces and communities across the country.

For anyone who feels like all hope is lost, Casey urges them to “pause in that moment of anxiety and try to put some distance between your stimuli and your response.”

“Take a few deep breaths, try to calm down, and give yourself long enough to get through that moment.”

Currently, Casey walks 9,000 steps every day in May, during Male Mental Health Month in June. The 9000 steps represent the nine Australian lives lost to suicide every day, seven of which are men. The initiative raised more than $45,000 in its first week.

June is Male Mental Health Month 2026. For more information, visit the LIVIN website.

If you or someone you know needs support, please reach out Lifeline at 13 11 14 or Mensline Australia on 1300 78 99 78.