Around three months after his son Mac took his own life, Wayne Holdsworth decided he had a responsibility to ensure other families didn’t go through the pain his family was suffering. It led to the creation of a registered charity, SmackTalk.

Wayne decided that he wanted to leave Mac a legacy because at 17, he hadn’t really left one.  He also wanted to use Mac's death as a catalyst to do more around suicide prevention and also assist people with seeing the signs that kids and people show – before it’s too late.  

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Wayne wants everyone to have the skill sets to be able to identify people who are struggling, then to have the skill set to be able to ask the right questions of those people, friends, family. We need people to be able to know what steps to take if they identify a person who is in trouble and who has suicidal thoughts – and that all leads to saving more lives.  

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And that’s the purpose of SmackTalk and Mac’s legacy. It is to firstly ensure that no one has to go through what I’ve gone through, and secondly, that people are educated around suicide prevention.