Food for Thought

Study shines a spotlight on darkness within the entertainment industry

''They were 30 hours that turned Matthew Henderson's life on its head. Back in March, the respected theatrical stage manager lost three friends to suicide, all of whom he had worked alongside in the entertainment industry."

In this line of work, you create family when you are on the road, and that 30-odd hours affected so many people I know," Henderson says. "Suicide was something that had impacted my life when I was about 13, when I lost a good friend. Then it was every couple of years. Then I lost someone I knew or had worked with every year. Then it was a couple of times a year. When that day happened back in March, when three people I knew took their lives, I realised there was something wrong and we needed to fix it."

Henderson, who is production stage manager for The Lion King, took to Facebook late at night to vent his thoughts. The next morning he had hundreds of responses from friends and colleagues. That encouraged him to contact Entertainment Assist, a charity helping workers in the entertainment industry...''

by Mark Hawthorne