Wānaka builder Glen Thurston is continuing to raise awareness about mental health, but his focus has moved from the construction industry to the hunting community. 

Last week (Friday November 29) Glen was undertaking his anniversary climb of Lake Hāwea’s Corner Peak, following his successful 2022 mission to climb the peak 53 times - matching the number of people in the construction industry who took their lives each year. 

Almost 300 people joined him across the 53 climbs in 2022, and last Friday half a dozen people joined him on a “perfect day” for the second anniversary climb.

Glen said the conversations he had on Corner Peak during the 2022 climbs around “firearms and the hesitation to seek help” made him realise the need to address the barrier within the hunting community.

Last week’s annual Corner Peak climb attracted a good number of people. PHOTO: Supplied

In October 2019, Glen was struggling with mental health challenges of his own. He tried to get help - and had his firearms removed. As he was farming at the time, this “made life really difficult”, he said.

The experience uncovered a significant issue within the firearms community: the fear of seeking mental health support due to the potential threat of losing one's licence.

“You think if someone's got a firearms license and they're not well, we all know the suicide rate and mental health [challenges in] the farming industry [are] pretty high,’’ Glen said.

“If they have that fear of losing their firearms, they're not gonna get help. If you have every single farmer not getting help, just because they don't [want] to lose their firearms, because they need their firearms to do their job. 

“Long-term, I see this being a massive crisis for the country. We're doing all this good stuff about breaking the stigma and men's mental health ... but in the background, there's this hidden barrier and no one's talking about it, no one's doing anything about it.”

In July this year Glen and fellow hunter Sam Manson launched the Mental Hunts website, which provides resources, articles, helplines and events dedicated to integrating mental health with the hunting/rural lifestyle. 

“I thought it was time to step up ... I'm doing this for everyone else and it needs to change. Otherwise, people will die and it won't be the guns doing it. It'll be the fact that they haven't had the help they needed early.”

Glen said he was creating resources specifically to help hunters, and he recognised hunting was good for people's wellbeing.

“[There] is nothing you can compare it to, it is mountain medicine. It is meditation in the hills. It's what I do for meditation. I've said it before, but I love the concept of meditation and sitting in my room and meditating, but I'm just really crap at it. My mind wanders, but you get out hunting and you are, you're in that moment.”

Glen has also returned as an The Outlet Wānaka guest to talk about how he got involved in helping hunters with their mental health.

He talks about the stigma around mental health, the importance of getting help early, rural life and how disclosing counselling or medication for mental health can mean licence holders can keep their guns.