Monty Shares his Journey with Depression

I am Monty Collins, I am the director of SDO Custom Designs and we're based out here in Mangere, South Auckland. We're basically a company that does logos, murals and uniforms and garments, basically anything. I think for the first Covid, that was a stressful time There was potential business happening Everything was starting to flow and then (snap) all of a sudden, you’re getting notices, like emails "sorry we can't do this", "sorry we can't do this", "sorry we can't do this". For us, well, for me personally I just had to sit in my corner and in my own little mind space and somewhat, just look past it and just realize, look, everyone is going through a hard time. Me personally, I got depression so, it didn’t help, you know like, my business, my artwork, is my stress relief and to hear that potential business was going that stressed me out. The things that went through me head were my family, food, rent, especially rent, you know. At the same time, just working on what we can do so we started doing preorders for hoodies and all that stuff and it was really good that helped put some, ease that, there’s still potential out there. Our people we're, we are vocal but we're not emotionally vocal or mentally vocal. When I say mentally vocal, I think the words depression, mental health, mental illness is not in our vocab You know how it is, it's basically like Toughen up, you know, blah blah but they don’t realize that it’s an actual condition and some people, even though they toughen it out sometimes they don't live to see the next day, cause it just gets too much, and I've lost a few friends from it purely because either one, they don’t want to put on their act that they need help, two, they don’t know who to talk to, three, they've just changed so much because of the metal state that they've had that they hide, you know and then if you don't keep in contact with those ones you will never see them again. I think there should be a massive awareness about peoples mental state especially within the lockdown and the stresses of, expensive housing and minimum wage and just getting food on the table is sometimes stressful for people. It's the reason why I want to do my bit within this campaign and express it the way I know how to and that's with art. I've been given a wall out in Otara and certain cultures, a Tiki is somewhat a symbol of strength and what I've done there is I've done a laughing Tiki saying cheers, with the kava cup because the kava bowl is utilized as a device for conversation amongst men it's the way men communicate back in the day You know, clap twice you get another cup makes it easier to talk the waves represent Covid and the hardships that everyone's going through and basically, what I am trying to portray is that there's always light at the end of the tunnel just gotta stand strong and communicate more with your families.