ROYAL COMMISSION INTO VETERANS SUICIDE – DEFENCE & VETERAN LEGAL SERVICE
The Defence and Veteran Legal Service was set up specifically to assist veterans and their families make submissions to the Royal Commission into Veteran Suicides.
They are showing the film ‘Living’ at various locations around the state, the first showing being:
Cinema Nova Carlton, Sunday February 26, 4.15pm
Other Victorian viewings are:
Regent Cinema Ballarat, Sunday March 5 4.30
Wallis Cinema Mildura, Sunday March 12 4.15
Astor Cinema Ararat, Tuesday March 21 6.30
Horsham Centre Cinema, Wednesday March 22 6.30
Capitol Cinema Warrnambool, Sunday March 26 4.15
Star Cinema Eaglehawk, Wednesday 5 April 7 pm.
The event will begin with a presentation and panel discussion about the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide.
Many of Defence and Veteran Legal Service clients leave the ADF and find it difficult to live in the civilian world, cut off from their network and suffering PTSD and other injury and illness. This is compounded by the fact that to get their entitlements they are often required to live in a negative space where they have to prove that they have PTSD, prove that they are injured and, in some cases, even prove that they are dying. When they are trying to find a way to be living, society often wants them to live in a space where they are dying.
The film ‘Living’ was selected because the subject matter relates well to the work Defence and Veteran Legal Service are doing. In the film a public servant who has lived a cloistered life gets a diagnosis of terminal illness. Rather than going to a dying frame of mind that society expects he starts truly living for the first time in his life.
Defence and Veteran Legal Service believe a good outcome of the Royal Commission will be finding a way to help veterans and their families to be living.