Content warning: This post contains mentions of suicide and death.
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After a suicide, we so often hear the same message:
Reach out.
Talk to someone.
Ask for help.
Check in on the people around you.
Those messages matter. Of course they do. Human connection matters enormously.
But after writing about the responses to the death of Paul Green, I kept coming back to something that has troubled me for a long time.
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What happens when someone does reach out?
What happens when the source of a person’s distress isn’t something that can be separated neatly from the environment they have to return to every day?
What happens when that environment is their workplace?
What happens when someone says they’re struggling, raises concerns, asks for help, needs leave, needs protection, needs somebody to listen, or simply needs the people with power over their circumstances to stop making things worse?
And what responsibility belongs to institutions then?
Because suicide prevention cannot begin and end with placing the responsibility on the distressed person to speak.
There also has to be responsibility on the other side of that conversation.
These are some of the cases and stories I came across in my research that made me think more deeply about that distinction.
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Bill Knight — remembering the human face behind institutional work
In April 2023, The Miami Student published a retrospective about William “Bill” Knight, Assistant Provost for Institutional Research and Effectiveness at Miami University in Ohio, who died by suicide in April 2021 at the age of 55.
Reading this article, I’m heartbroken to hear about Bill.
It’s not a story related to workplace bullying. I include it for a different reason.
Bill Knight was remembered as an extraordinarily kind, thoughtful and generous academic administrator. Former colleagues described his “sunny disposition,” his patience, his willingness to make time for students and his commitment to helping others.
One detail in the story particularly stayed with me.
A colleague had included in an assessment report the story of eight-year-old Gabriel Taye, who had died by suicide after being bullied at school. She didn’t expect Knight, a senior administrator dealing with countless reports, to actually engage with it.
He did.
Bill responded by thanking her for reminding him of “the human face of the work we do, which too often gets overshadowed in administrative work. I am heartbroken to hear about Gabriel.”
That sentence is extraordinary in its simplicity.
Administration has a human face.
Policies have a human face.
Decisions have a human face.
Behind a case number, a complaint, a leave balance, an injury-management process, a risk assessment, a return-to-work plan or another piece of correspondence is an actual human being.
Bill’s colleagues remembered precisely that quality in him: he didn’t allow administrative work to become so mechanical that he stopped seeing the person.
Two years after his death, they were still talking about his dignity, his grace and the care he showed other people.
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Sam Keast — a 47-minute phone call
The story of 27-year-old New Zealand carpenter Sam Keast is much more directly about work.
Sam moved to Melbourne in 2023 to establish a new workshop for his employer, Playground Centre. According to reporting by news.com.au, his family said that what was supposed to be an exciting opportunity became increasingly isolating and overwhelming.
The article describes long working hours, increasing responsibilities, inadequate support and difficulties obtaining medical care.
On 28 November 2023, shortly before his death, Sam made a 47-minute telephone call to a colleague.
He also searched Google for the words “work negligence.”
His sister Serena later described that search as something she regarded as his version of a suicide note.
The family believed that Sam’s deteriorating circumstances at work contributed to his death. They also questioned why the death hadn’t initially been reported to WorkSafe Victoria. Nine months later, after Serena contacted the regulator herself, WorkSafe commenced an investigation into whether the employer had complied with its duty of care.
Whatever ultimately follows from an investigation, the story raises a question far larger than one workplace:
What does “reach out” mean when a worker is already communicating distress about the conditions surrounding them?
A phone call is reaching out.
Talking to a colleague is reaching out.
Searching for information about workplace negligence is an attempt to understand what’s happening.
The responsibility cannot always be pushed back onto the person who is suffering.
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Andrew Walker — a “culture of fear and intimidation”
Andrew was a 46-year-old addiction-services clinician in Nelson, New Zealand.
He helped young people dealing with addiction.
According to the coroner’s findings, Walker had been experiencing significant workplace stress before his death in August 2020.
The subsequent investigation went beyond the circumstances of one individual.
WorkSafe New Zealand interviewed 11 workers from the Alcohol and Drug Service. Workers described high caseloads, inconsistent allocation of work and inappropriate management behaviour. They described what the investigation recorded as a “culture of fear and intimidation.”
An external investigation commissioned by the health board also identified problems and recommended improvements, including addressing management behaviour found to be negatively affecting the mental health of staff.
WorkSafe ultimately didn’t take enforcement action, noting the steps the organisation had subsequently taken to address the problems (although I do hope, unlike SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe NZ followed up with real on-site inspections, to make sure those “steps” were operationally implemented).
However, I’m also emphasising that this isn’t about retrospectively assigning a simple, single cause to a person’s suicide. Human lives and deaths are more complicated than that.
It’s about recognising that psychosocial conditions at work are real conditions.
Workload is real.
Fear is real.
Intimidation is real.
Isolation is real.
The consequences of poor management are not merely matters of employee dissatisfaction.
They can become matters of health and safety.
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John Brenkus — and the family left behind
In June 2025, 7NEWS Australia reported the death of John Brenkus, the much-loved creator and host of Sports Science.
John was 54.
His family said that he had been battling depression and asked for privacy for his heartbroken family and friends. John himself had previously spoken publicly about experiencing profound depression and suicidality.
The tributes that followed remembered an intelligent, creative, kind and encouraging man whose work had reached millions of people.
I include this story for another reason too.
Those words from his family — a request for privacy — triggered me.
Suicide doesn’t happen to one person in isolation.
There’s a family standing behind that loss.
There are people trying to absorb something incomprehensible. There is grief. Shock. Disorientation. There are practical matters that still somehow have to be dealt with when ordinary functioning has become almost impossible.
And families need protection too.
I know that personally.
My own family experienced the same tragic loss.
If only my employer had respected my family’s need for privacy and my need for leave entitlements too while we were living through it.
Those things are not administrative inconveniences.
They are part of how human beings survive catastrophic loss.
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Silvio Pietrangelo — when a coroner speaks to employers
A 2023 article in Canadian Occupational Safety reported on the death of Montreal city worker Silvio Pietrangelo and the findings of Quebec coroner Julie Blondin.
The article reported that an inquest heard psychiatric evidence connecting Pietrangelo’s suicide with bullying and isolation at work.
The coroner used the case to make a broader point about employer responsibility, observing that other coroners’ reports had also concerned suicides associated with workplace conflicts and describing the problem as a social issue requiring attention.
Her recommendations included ensuring employees knew about workplace-harassment policies and available assistance, and making managers aware of the importance of psychological health and safety.
The significance of that message is difficult to miss.
The response to workplace psychological harm cannot simply be:
Here is a telephone number. Reach out.
Employers control workplaces.
Employers control management structures.
Employers receive complaints.
Employers are required to implement those policies.
Employers can investigate hazards.
Employers can intervene.
Employers can separate people where necessary.
Employers can protect workers from retaliation (and definitely should NEVER become the perpetrator of retaliation).
Employers can manage workloads.
Employers can create safety - or fail to create it - or as in my extreme case, perpetuate the WHS hazards at a whole new frightening level.
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Jodie Zebell — 31 years old, a wife and mother
David Yamada’s Minding the Workplace documented the death of Jodie Zebell, a 31-year-old mammographer in Wisconsin.
Zebell was married and had two young children. She had been regarded as a model employee.
According to the account cited by Yamada, after receiving a promotion she became the target of coworkers who blamed her unfairly for workplace problems. The behaviour reportedly included false accusations and criticism in front of other people.
After months of alleged workplace bullying, Zebell died by suicide in February 2008.
Her story was later put before a Wisconsin legislative committee considering the Healthy Workplace Bill — proposed legislation directed at health-harming workplace bullying.
Again, I come back to the same point.
A workplace isn’t somehow outside the conversation about suicide prevention.
Adults spend enormous portions of their lives at work.
Their livelihood can depend upon it.
Their financial security can depend upon it.
Their professional identity can be bound up in it.
Their relationships, reputation and sense of belonging can be affected by it.
When something goes badly wrong there, telling the injured person simply to become more resilient or to reach out somewhere else isn’t necessarily prevention.
Sometimes the environment causing the harm has to change.
The work environment may even need to radically change.
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Kevin Morrissey — and the pleas for intervention
The case of Kevin Morrissey is particularly confronting because it occurred inside a university.
Morrissey was the 52-year-old managing editor of the prestigious Virginia Quarterly Review, published by the University of Virginia.
In August 2010, David Yamada wrote about reporting that David’s family and people close to the journal said he had complained to the university about alleged workplace bullying by his boss.
They maintained that the institution had done virtually nothing to help.
Yamada was careful not to declare a conclusion before the facts were established. But he argued that the scenario itself couldn’t be dismissed: an allegedly bullied and vulnerable employee, requests for employer intervention, and a devastating death.
He also made an important observation about what can happen when workers complain: an employer’s resistance to complaints can itself make an already dangerous situation worse.
A month later, Yamada returned to the case after further reporting by The Washington Post.
By then, two competing explanations were being publicly debated.
David’s family and some colleagues believed workplace bullying and the university’s failure to respond to his requests for assistance were central to what happened. Others emphasised David’s history of depression and disputed the bullying allegations.
Yamada cautioned against treating allegations as proof.
That caution matters.
But so does what happened next.
The University of Virginia’s subsequent internal investigation criticised aspects of management and institutional oversight and recommended changes to make it easier for employees to report workplace problems and have those reports reach university leaders. The investigation didn’t conclude that bullying caused David Morrissey’s death, and the manager denied harassing him or other staff.
For me, that makes this case more instructive, not less.
We don’t need to reduce a suicide to one cause in order to ask whether an organisation fulfilled its responsibilities.
We can ask:
- Were concerns raised?
- Who received them?
- Were they documented?
- Were they escalated?
- Was the worker listened to?
- Was the workplace risk assessed?
- Did the organisation intervene while intervention was still possible?
- And did its systems protect the human being standing in front of them?
Those are workplace questions.
They are governance questions.
And sometimes they are life-and-death questions.
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“Reach out” requires someone on the other side
That’s what connects these very different stories for me.
Not every person had the same circumstances.
Not every death can or should be attributed to work.
Not every allegation was ultimately established.
And suicide is complex. It would be irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
But complexity cannot become an excuse for institutional passivity either.
If our public message about suicide prevention is going to be “reach out,” then there must be something meaningful waiting on the other side.
Someone has to listen.
Someone has to recognise risk.
Someone has to act when they have the power to act.
And where the source of serious psychological harm is a workplace, the conversation can’t be confined to what the individual worker should have done differently.
We also have to ask what the employer did.
What management did - Eg. The library associate director- http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/associate-director-unfit-to-do-inherent.html
What human resources did. - Eg. The HR associate director - http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/hr-associate-director-unfit-to-do.html
What workplace health and safety systems did. Eg. The national manager of employment relations and SAFETY - http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/02/introducing-corporate-psychopath.html
What regulators did when concerns reached them. Eg. The SafeWork NSW inspector - http://mystory-myvoice.blogspot.com/2025/08/enter-unsafework-nsw-that-rtw-plan-i.html
And whether the systems supposedly designed to protect people actually protected them. The answer is NO. The system is abusive towards a worker screaming for help and protection FOR YEARS. Readers can choose to read any of my posts, so far in my story. Each incident of “failure”, causing more harm to an employee targeted in institutional abuse, as reprisal for requesting safety at work, is disgraceful!
Sometimes a person has already reached out.
Sometimes they have been speaking for a very long time.
The question then isn’t:
Why didn’t they ask for help?
The question is:
What happened when they did?
Part 2 will continue this discussion beyond individual cases and stories, looking more closely at what the evidence tells us about workplace bullying, psychosocial harm and suicide.
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References
Momany, A. (2023, 21 April). ‘He always had a sunny disposition’: Remembering Bill Knight, two years later. The Miami Student.
Peters, D. (2024, 24 September). ‘47-minute phone call before tradie’s suicide’. news.com.au.
Ridout, A. (2024, 9 January). ‘Manager’s “culture of fear and intimidation” cited in report into man’s death’. Stuff.
Sutton, B. (2025, 2 June). ‘Sporting world rocked by shock death of much-loved TV host John Brenkus’. 7NEWS Australia.
Wilson, J. (2023, 13 November). ‘Coroner reminds employers to address workplace bullying’. Canadian Occupational Safety: The Safety Mag.
Yamada, D. (2010, 8 April). ‘The workplace bullying suicide of Jodie Zebell, age 31’. Minding the Workplace: The New Workplace Institute Blog.
Yamada, D. (2010, 13 August). ‘Did workplace bullying trigger the suicide of a University of Virginia literary journal editor?’ Minding the Workplace: The New Workplace Institute Blog.
Yamada, D. (2010, 9 September). ‘Washington Post on the suicide of Kevin Morrissey, Virginia literary journal editor’. Minding the Workplace: The New Workplace Institute Blog.
