Showing results for "Desert" in Mental Health

Brendan Cullen manages Kars Station, a 10,000-head sheep property 65 kilometres outside Broken Hill, New South Wales. In 2022, despite his nearest beach being more than 600 kilometres away, he swam the English Channel. Taking up swimming was part of Brendan's recovery from severe depression, an illness that had seen him cope in highly unhealthy ways–drinking, overwork, being emotionally absent–for years. But then he found the strength to walk through the doors of Broken Hill Hospital and ask for help.

Whenever we experience events that are overwhelmingly painful, part of ourself is left in the past, unresolved, almost in a kind of suspended animation, until such time as we’re able to heal and release the pain. Carrying the memory of a traumatic event is a bit like living in a house with a room that’s closed off. We never want to enter that room because of the painful feelings it holds, but we can’t clean it up and remodel it without going through the door.

In 2011, Jessica Buchanan found herself in the middle of a nightmare she could never have prepared for; she was a hostage in the desert, captured by Somali pirates, who held a 45 million dollar ransom demand on her head. Taken at gunpoint while on a routine field mission for her non-governmental organization, Jessica was forced to live in deplorable conditions, regularly tortured, and kept on a starvation diet for 93 days. On January 25, 2012, Jessica was successfully rescued by SEAL Team VI, upon order of President Obama, and finally brought home.