 Just as a background, this piece came about after a discussion with friends, I've got a background in youth work and mental health and we were trying to figure out what depression looked like and I was starting to see it seeping into my social circles and it wasn't just confined to my high-performing entrepreneurial or business-owning friends or friends in trades or full-time mothers or friends who worked in law enforcement education, health care I was starting to see it everywhere. So we started having these discussions that needed to be had and I formed what I think is a pretty good view of what depression looks like So this is te kuri pangu, the black dog. Te kuri pangu, the black dog. Why do we call it a dog when stumbling blindly throughout this fog is not reminiscent of man's best friends? It is rather te taniwhā o te pa, the monster of the darkness. This taniwhā does not discriminate Its hate does not differentiate based on your sex or race, the place you call home, your bank balance or your chromosomes This monotone syndrome will engulf your life force and force you to your knees What does it look like? There are no broken bones or external symptoms or signs No prism of crimson flowing outward from within, just victims confined within invisible paradigms It looks like your builder, your plumber, your dentist Relentless in conquest, its sly and inventive, mask on a man who is drowning, no bottom in sight And golfed in a torrent in a sea filled with fear and an onslaught of currents in a realm filled with his tears And still he stands. It's the girl at the dairy, the lady on the bus Your local school teacher with whom your children you trust and inside she suffers, she can't breathe She's constricted, no rationale of thinking can prohibit the interlinking of what's inflicted And still she stands. It's the man here today at the back of the crowd Broad shoulders well respected with an invisible storm cloud and this morning he contemplated taking his life Mindset segregated and waited within this taniwhā co-wurst, need not think twice And still he stands. It's your sister, your mother, the lady next door And she's trapped within south, her hands tatted and worn and she's battered and clawed As she claws an attempt to her wounds, she's forlorn and undated with contempt for herself And still she stands. It looks like Rob Mokaraka attempting suicide by police Unable to see some releases sadness to navigate towards peace It's my king in a vicious cycle of frustration, anger and regret In a preset pallet of shades of grey indebted to an injured mindset And still they stand. Now it looks like almost all of us At some stage within our lives, no I don't have a magical cure But I do know within darkness it thrives. Now Rob was on to something He said with Aroha we are set free for to cast that taniwhā to the light Renders it incapable to breathe. You do not need to harden up Yes it's okay to talk. You are not alone with the journey you walked Nor the sum of the total of your thoughts It looks like me, the wahine standing before you on this platform Who channels through darkness to brainstorm and perform Turnu-nu inner deformities into an art form And still I stand. It looks like us And together we stand. Kia ora