Former National Rugby League player and champion professional boxer, Joe Wil-liams, was in Cobar last week to deliver suicide prevention and wellbeing education workshops.
Joe played for South Sydney Rabbit-ohs, Penrith Panthers and Canterbury Bull-dogs before switching to professional boxing in 2009 where he won two WBF World Jnr Welterweight champion titles and an WBC Asia Continental Title.
Although forging a successful professional sporting career, for the majority of his life Joe had battled with suicidal ideation and Bi Polar Disorder.
After a suicide attempt in 2012, Joe then felt his purpose was to help people like himself who struggled with mental illness.
Joe was invited to come and present in Co-bar by NSW Outback Division of General Practice’s Wellness Coordinator, Wendy Liu.
As a Wellness Coordinator, a large part of Wendy’s role is educating the community about suicide prevention through training and workshops.
In Joe’s customised workshop last week, he spoke about dealing with adversities, strug-gles, resilience, addiction, connection, emo-tional wellbeing and healing trauma at both school and community sessions in Cobar.
Wendy will be hosting more information and training sessions with a safeTALK Work-shop to be held this Friday covering the topics of: keeping safe connections; things you can do; supplementary activities; education poli-cies; healing; living with risk and mental health.
