Australia’s suicide prevention system has invested heavily in clinic-based, Medicare-funded models. Yet the evidence is blunt: too many men don’t walk through those doors. Again and again, they tell us their problem isn’t “mental health”—it’s the relentless stack of stressors: financial strain, job insecurity, injuries, substance use, relationship breakdowns. When the system insists on framing this as illness, many men turn away.
Torque It Out was designed in response to this reality. It is disruptive by design, refusing to accept that “bricks and mortar” clinics are the only gateway. Instead, the program meets men where they already are—industrial precincts, roadside cafés, car meets, and local footy fields. Our Legends Lounge is the most visible example: a simple marquee, a few chairs, and an open invitation. Set up in full view of the community, it becomes a place for men to connect, yarn, and admit for the first time: “I’m not coping.”
What makes Torque It Out different is not just the outreach—it is the co-design. From the start, men shaped how the service looks, feels, and works. They told us what they wouldn’t attend, what made them suspicious, and what felt safe. We listened. Diversity in co-design here means more than consultation: it means giving men, many from blue-collar and working-class communities, genuine power to shape the model. It also means embedding people with lived experience—of suicide attempts, substance use, and hard, physical work—into the outreach team as peers and connectors.
The results are striking. Men who have never touched formal services are engaging in the Legends Lounge. The stigma drops when conversations happen shoulder-to-shoulder rather than across a desk. By focusing on stressors rather than diagnoses, Torque It Out builds trust, which in turn opens pathways into supports—whether that’s financial counselling, relationship support, or eventually, clinical care.
This presentation will demonstrate how Torque It Out disrupts traditional suicide prevention, and how its co-designed, place-based approach creates a model that can be replicated in any community. It will argue that if we want to shift the needle on male suicide, we must stop designing for what systems want, and start designing for what men say they need.