From Lived Experience to Advocacy: A Heart That Never Gave Up

In this conversation, Chris reflected on how his life’s work—across education, suicide prevention, trauma research, and advocacy—emerged not from ambition or careful career planning, but from lived experience. His journey is not a story of linear achievement. It is a story of enduring what should never have happened, learning how to stay alive through it, and gradually transforming that survival into meaningful change for others.

He grew up in a large working-class Catholic family where money was scarce, and expectations were straightforward: work hard, behave, and get on with it. University was never part of the imagined future. Art school was. From an early age, he painted, drew, photographed, and wrote poetry as a way of expressing what could not easily be spoken. Long before the language of “trauma-informed practice” existed, art became his way of processing pain. When school assignments called for landscapes and still life, he painted violence, turmoil, and inner conflict instead. Teachers often did not know how to respond, but art gave him something essential—a voice when words felt inaccessible.

The university eventually replaced the art school, not because of a grand vision, but because it offered stimulation, connection, and intellectual engagement. There was no long-term blueprint. At that stage of his life, survival itself was the primary achievement.

Teaching, too, was never part of the plan. He resisted the idea of becoming a lecturer until someone noticed his writing and classroom presence and offered him the chance to teach a course he had just completed. That opportunity shifted the direction of his life. What began as tutoring evolved into roles as a teaching assistant, a contract lecturer, and, eventually, long-term academic work. Often, he taught subjects outside his formal background, yet his strength lay in translating theory into lived meaning. Students followed him through different stages of study not because of prestige, but because his teaching integrated scholarship with real-world experience.

Behind this professional path was profound personal loss. During adolescence and university, Chris lost close friends to suicide while also navigating his own suicidal thoughts. Research became a way to seek understanding. He immersed himself in philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, culture, and religion—not out of abstract curiosity, but out of urgency. His master’s thesis focused on adolescent suicide, written while he was living the realities he was studying.

At the time, lived experience was not regarded as a legitimate source of insight. Acknowledging it would have been seen as bias. Only later did the field begin to recognise that survival itself can deepen understanding rather than diminish it. That early research unexpectedly opened doors into suicide prevention work when professionals recognised the depth and nuance he brought—an integration of scholarship and personal history.

Throughout his career, Chris has held two realities simultaneously: individual vulnerability and systemic responsibility. He challenges the reduction of suicide, trauma, or abuse to personal weakness, while also resisting narratives that confine people solely to victimhood. Compassion and accountability exist together in his work. That tension forms its foundation.

Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, he learned stoicism at an early age. Emotional expression, particularly anger, was discouraged. What developed was not emotional absence, but containment. Later, in crisis settings, that containment became a form of regulation—an ability to remain steady and grounded in moments of distress. Over time, he also learned a different form of strength: the capacity to cry, to name pain, and to recognise that silence does not always mean avoidance.

His doctoral research on suicide bereavement in young men identified multiple forms of silence: silence imposed by trauma, silence shaped by stigma and judgment, and silence chosen as a way of making meaning. Not all men seek healing through conversation. Some require shared activity, companionship, or simply the presence of another person without pressure to disclose. Sitting beside someone can be as significant as speaking to them.

In discussing male suicide and trauma, Chris names difficult truths. Male suicide rates remain significantly higher than female rates. Men in construction and manual labour face elevated risk. Male survivors of sexual abuse encounter intense stigma, particularly when perpetrators are female—an experience society often struggles to acknowledge. For many men, shame and disbelief delay disclosure for decades. Trauma, masculinity, grief, and suicide are interconnected, and addressing them separately limits the effectiveness of support.

From a public health perspective, the data reveal persistent challenges. Suicide rates remain high. Prison populations are overwhelmingly male. Men continue to disengage from education and health services. Practical barriers compound the problem: services that operate only during working hours, financial pressures that prevent time off, a shortage of male practitioners, and environments that feel unwelcoming. Some countries have responded with workplace-based initiatives and male-focused health programs, showing improved outcomes. The issue, as Chris sees it, is not the absence of evidence but the reluctance to act decisively upon it.

His advocacy is driven by a combination of anger and care—anger at systemic failure and repeated inaction, and care for those who continue to be overlooked. He does not seek status through academia. Instead, he uses his position as leverage to amplify voices that might otherwise remain unheard. Research, in his view, carries an ethical obligation to translate into change.

He emphasises that healing is not uniform. Talk therapy may help some, while others benefit from movement, cultural practices, structured routine, or quiet connection. Meaningful support offers choice—choice in how to engage, when to speak, and with whom. The goal is not to fix men, but to design systems that respect the ways they already survive.

When asked who he is, Chris responds simply: he could not be anyone else. His teaching, research, and advocacy cannot be separated from his lived experience. Attempts to divide the professional from the personal proved unsustainable. Authenticity became the only path forward.

After decades of confronting resistance and witnessing slow systemic change, he continues. Each day, he stands alongside others, committed to ensuring that survival need not be carried alone.

Full Podcast: From Lived Experience to Advocacy: A Heart That Never Gave Up