The Warning Light We Keep Ignoring

Michael Akkawi on World Mental Health Day 2026

Most mornings start the same way for me. Gloves on, a few rounds on the punching bag, some pad work if I can rope someone in. Boxing has kept me physically fit for years, but that's not why I do it. I do it because I know what my head is like on the days I skip it.

Physical fitness is easy to talk about. We compare step counts, swap gym programs, brag about a long ride on the weekend. Mental fitness is a different story. Yet it works the same way. It takes maintenance. It slips when you neglect it. And, like anything worth having, it's easier to keep than to rebuild.

Think about your car. You start it, and a light comes on. Tyre pressure. Oil. Engine check. Nobody looks at that light and says, "I'll deal with it next year." You pull in, you top it up, you book it in. You do it because you know that a small fault, ignored, becomes a breakdown on the side of the road.

Our minds send us the same signals. Trouble sleeping. A short fuse. Losing interest in things you used to enjoy. Drinking a bit more than usual. Pulling away from people. These are dashboard lights. Most of us drive straight past them.

I've been thinking about why we treat a $60,000 car with more care than the human steering it, and I don't have a neat answer. Some of it is habit. Some of it is pride. And a lot of it is the story we tell ourselves that everyone else is coping fine, so we should be too.

Leading workplace psychologists Transitioning Well have built their whole practice around a simple observation: the times when people are most at risk of psychological distress are the big transitions. Becoming a parent. Health changes in midlife, including menopause. Moving into late career and retirement. Add redundancy, a healthcrisis or the loss of a pregnancy, and you have a map of the moments where life quietly rearranges itself and the old routines stop working.

What strikes me about that list is how ordinary it is. These aren't rare events. Almost everyone reading this will go through several of them. The risk isn't that something unusual happens. The risk is that something very usual happens and we don't give ourselves permission to find it hard.

So, here's the first thing I'd say on World Mental Health Day. It's OK to not be OK. You don't have to measure yourself against what everyone else appears to be doing. The bloke at the next desk, the mate who seems to have it all sorted, the person on LinkedIn who is always winning: you're seeing their highlight reel, not their dashboard.

If you're not feeling right, start with your GP. That's the first step. You don't need a diagnosis or a crisis to book an appointment. A GP can talk through what's going on, refer you to a psychologist if that would help, and put a Mental Health Treatment Plan in place. Treat it like the mechanic. You wouldn't try to rebuild your own gearbox.

I work in property, and property runs on construction. I can't write about mental health without being honest about the industry I depend on.

The construction industry loses around 190 workers to suicide every year, and a construction worker is five to six times more likely to die by suicide than from an on-site incident. Male construction workers still die by suicide at close to twice the rate of other employed men. Those figures come from research led by the University of Melbourne for MATES in Construction, the program that has put suicide prevention on sites across the country since 2008.

There is some hope in that data. Rates have been falling, and in some states, they're now converging with the national average. MATES deserves a lot of credit for that. But the numbers are still too high, one life lost is too high, and they're rising again among the youngest workers on our sites. Layer on the economic pressure everyone in this sector is feeling right now, from insolvencies to cost blowouts to the sheer uncertainty of it all, and it's obvious this isn't a problem we've solved.

Dr Zac Seidler, a clinical psychologist and Global Director of Men's Health Research at Movember, makes a point that has stayed with me. Men are perfectly happy to talk about their physio. Why can't they talk about their psychologist the same way? That's the shift I want to see on our sites and in our boardrooms. Seeing a professional about your head should be as unremarkable as seeing one about your knee.

If you notice that someone around you isn't themselves, you have two options. You can do nothing, or you can do something.

Doing something is smaller than you think. It's a question. "You haven't seemed yourself lately... are you going, OK?" That's the whole thing. You don't need to fix anything. You just need to open the door.

And if they say, "I'm fine," ask again. Movember's advice is blunt about this: people often say they're fine when they're not, so don't be afraid to ask twice. Plenty of people won't open up the first time. Some won't the second time either. But knowing someone noticed, and cared enough to come back, can be the difference.

This World Mental Health Day, I'm asking you to check the dashboard. Yours, and the person's next to you. Then act on what you see.

It might just be a lifesaver.

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If you or someone you know needs support:

‍Lifeline 13 11 14 (24/7).

‍MATES in Construction 1300 642 111 (24/7).

Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 (24/7)

In an emergency, call 000

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