'The Mosman Park murder-suicide made me ask a question I didn’t really want answered.'

WARNING: This article discusses mental health, murder, suicide, suicidal ideation, and carer burnout that some readers may find distressing.

Otis and Leon Clune. Source: Facebook

If you are struggling with mental health issues or this article raises difficult feelings for you: Support is available. There are services listed at the end of this article offering confidential help for carers, neurodivergent people, families, and anyone feeling overwhelmed or distressed.

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Seeing the recent news headline of the suspected murder-suicide involving two young boys in Mosman Park, an affluent suburb of Perth, Western Australia, I froze in horror and felt the blood drain from my face.

Like many people, I imagine, I was unnerved and engulfed by a strange sense of grief for people I did not even know. And then a thought surfaced, unbidden and unwelcome. I wondered whether caregiving and special needs were part of this story.

When follow-up reporting confirmed that the two brothers, Otis (14) and Leon (16), were autistic, and that their parents, Jarrod Clune (50) and Maiwenna Goasdoue (49), were full-time carers, the weight of that recognition settled in. Their parents had decided to jointly take the lives of their sons, and then their own.

I had asked the question, albeit only in my head. But the answer - yes - isn't satisfactory. Rather, it sets off more emotions, and intensifies my need to process the tragedy and examine personal memories that were unearthed.

I do not condone the action of these parents. It is truly horrific. Nothing in this piece is intended to justify or excuse it. What I want to do is explore the terrain around it: long-term strain, lack of adequate support, the exhausting work of caring, and the silence that so often surrounds families who are struggling. This is not an attempt to explain what happened, nor to assign blame. It is a reflection on systems, on silence, and on what happens when the two collide.

What is ‘support’?

The dictionary definition of the word ‘support’ is ‘to bear all or part of the weight of; hold up’. A support system, in theory, functions the same way, involving a network of services, professionals, friends and family members who can be relied upon to provide emotional or practical assistance in times of need. At its best, it is an ecosystem of care.

At its best, support is life-changing and dependable: a structure you can lean on when things get hard.

But for many families, especially those caring for neurodivergent people with high support needs, support is not a stable structure at all. It is conditional, temporary and reviewable. It can be reduced, withdrawn or reshaped by people far removed from daily realities.

Sources close to the family have said the parents had reached breaking point. According to The West Australian, Maddie Page, a former support worker for the boys, suggested the parents likely felt they had ‘no other choice’, despite the ‘love and resilience’ they had shown their sons throughout their short lives, especially during times of extreme difficulty and countless obstacles.

A friend, who wished to remain anonymous, said the family had recently had their NDIS funding cut, placing them under even greater pressure.

‘The very people the NDIS was created for are the very ones who cannot get the services they so desperately need,’ a statement published on 9News read.

‘The constant battle for services to help with their very high support needs boys was exhausting, never-ending and filled with rejection.’

NDIS under the microscope

In the wake of this tragedy, disability advocates have again called for greater support for families. Developmental Disability WA chief executive officer Mary Butterworth said that while she did not know the family personally, it was ‘fairly obvious’ they were not receiving the support they needed.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), launched in 2013, provides funding and support to eligible Australians with permanent and significant disabilities. Each participant receives a plan allocating funds across three support categories. The National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) is responsible for determining funding amounts under the NDIS Act 2013, which requires supports to be ‘reasonable and necessary’ for the participant’s needs and goals.

Recent changes aimed at improving financial sustainability have resulted in a significant number of plans being reduced at review. Reports indicate that around one-third of reassessed plans have experienced funding cuts, with average reductions of more than 20 per cent.

‘A huge number of people have had NDIS funds cut, especially over the last six months,’ disability advocate Samantha Connor told 9News.

When a plan is reduced, participants have the right to request an internal review, followed by an external appeal to the Administrative Review Tribunal. In practice, this is a slow, complex and emotionally draining process, with no guarantee of reinstated funding.

In response to a 2025 Guardian article titled ‘NDIS plans will be computer-generated, with human involvement dramatically cut under sweeping overhaul’, Dr George Taleporos, Independent Chair of Every Australian Counts, said:

‘People with disability and our families deserve a fair NDIS, not a system where a computer decides our funding and there is no real way to challenge mistakes. These decisions shape whether we can live safely in the community, avoid institutionalisation and participate in society.’

Every Australian Counts described the proposed changes in their summary as ‘deeply alarming’, warning they pose a serious risk to the rights and safety of people with disability.

This is the context in which we are asked to trust that ‘support’ will hold.

Families are exhausted

Support that must be constantly justified is not really support. It is labour. Emotional labour. Administrative labour. Advocacy labour. It requires families to repeatedly explain their lives at their most difficult moments, often to systems that reward compliance and composure rather than honesty.

The quieter you are, the easier you appear to manage, the more likely support is to be reduced. ‘Coping’ becomes evidence that you need less help, not that you are holding on by your fingernails.

Alongside this structural fragility runs another force: silence.

Many caregivers learn, over time, to speak carefully, or not at all, about how hard things really are. There are good reasons for this. Fear of judgement. Fear of being misunderstood. Fear that honesty will be met not with care, but with scrutiny or punishment. Fear that saying ‘I am not coping’ will mark you as unfit rather than human.

Silence becomes a survival strategy. You soften your language. You joke. You reassure. You say ‘we are managing’ when what you mean is ‘we are exhausted, and we do not know how long we can keep doing this’. You learn which truths are socially acceptable and which ones make people uncomfortable. You learn that love is expected to be limitless, even when energy, health and resources are not.

I know this terrain personally.

As a neurodivergent person and a carer, I am intimately familiar with the way exhaustion accumulates quietly. With how much effort it takes to advocate, not once, but endlessly: to government employees with limited understanding of autism; to professionals whose training does not adequately account for autistic experience; and to well-meaning friends and family members whose advice may be helpful for neurotypical people but is often inappropriate for autistic ones. I know how illness, burnout and responsibility compound rather than cancel each other out.

I know what it is to measure responses carefully, to avoid sounding ungrateful, argumentative, emotional, dramatic, negative or ‘too much’. I know how quickly reserves are depleted when rest is never quite enough and support is never quite secure.

This is not comparison. It is resonance.

What troubles me most in moments like this is not only the failure of systems or the silence of individuals, but the space that opens up between them. When support becomes unreliable and people do not feel safe speaking honestly, suffering is pushed underground. It becomes invisible, until it is not.

After tragedy

A ‘breaking point’ sounds as though it arrives suddenly, as if something inside a person snaps without warning. More often, breaking points are the result of prolonged pressure applied without relief. They are the outcome of years of strain, unmet needs, shrinking margins and being told, implicitly or explicitly, to cope quietly.

As a society, we are very good at responding after tragedy. We express shock. We search for causes. We argue about responsibility. What we are far less good at is listening earlier: listening when people say they are tired, overwhelmed or afraid. Listening when their distress is inconvenient, complex or does not fit neat narratives of resilience and gratitude.

For years, I questioned the philosophy behind R U OK? Day, particularly during the most challenging periods of caregiving when our three neurodivergent boys were young.

In principle and impact, it is an important campaign. It has helped normalise conversations about mental health and encouraged people to check in on one another. But as a neurodivergent person who struggles to share private emotions, and as someone who is painfully aware of what can and cannot realistically be solved through conversation, the campaign often made me feel more despondent.

What happens when the answer is no? What happens when the truth is something like: ‘I am not okay. My teenage son has suicidal ideation because he is autistic and struggling to cope with the world, and I cannot change that. I am constantly afraid I might lose him.’

How is someone supposed to respond to that? Ask more questions? Refer me to services we are already engaged with? Offer advice that I then have to expend precious cognitive energy explaining is something we have tried, are trying, cannot do, or cannot afford?

Often, it was safer to say ‘I am okay’.

Many carers do this, not to deceive, but to conserve what little energy they have. Energy needed for daily caregiving, for navigating the NDIA, Centrelink and education systems, for coordinating therapists and support workers, for planning even simple activities like a dentist visit while preparing for inevitable distressed resistance.

I remember emailing a carer support organisation once, asking for help. I never received a reply. Their website encouraged carers to call instead so they could conduct a proper assessment. I did not have the capacity to make that call. So I did not follow up.

What remains

In the aftermath of this tragedy, there is grief. Grief for two young lives cut heartbreakingly short. Grief for families pushed beyond endurance. And a renewed need to confront how poorly we understand autistic experience at the higher-support end of the spectrum, and how profoundly this impacts carers.

There is also an uncomfortable reckoning with the limitations of our systems.

‘I do not think we have enough trained support workers in Western Australia,’ Butterworth said.

‘If we had more investment into staff training and support, more families would feel like it is not all up to them to survive.’

Police investigations into the circumstances of the deaths are ongoing.

What now?

There is no single solution that can guarantee this kind of tragedy will never happen again. But there are choices we can make.

I do not believe the answer lies solely in funding, though funding matters enormously. It also lies in trust. In believing caregivers when they say things are hard. In building systems centred on trained, human professionals who respond to evidence and honesty with empathy rather than consequence. In understanding that speaking up can feel impossible. In making struggle speakable, safely and productively, before it becomes unbearable.

I have said many times that gaining access to NDIS funding was life-changing for our family, and that remains true. Gratitude and fear can coexist. Like many participants, I am deeply grateful for the support we receive, and simultaneously fearful of having it reduced or taken away at our next plan review under an increasingly automated system.

These are not easy reflections. They resist tidy conclusions. But silence has a cost, and so does pretending that systems are working simply because they exist.

I do not have answers. What I have is a hope, tentative but real, that we can learn to listen sooner, speak more gently and build forms of support that truly hold people before they reach the edge. That we can allow complexity without fear, and acknowledge strain without defensiveness or shame.

Because tragedies like this do not emerge from nowhere. They grow, slowly and quietly, in the space where support fails and silence follows.

Resources — Australia

If this article raised difficult feelings for you: Support is available. You don’t have to manage alone. The services below offer confidential help for carers, neurodivergent people, families, and anyone feeling overwhelmed or distressed.

See here for further resources.

Immediate crisis and mental health support

• Lifeline — 13 11 14 (24/7). Crisis support for anyone feeling overwhelmed, distressed, or in emotional crisis.

• Suicide Call Back Service — 1300 659 467 (24/7). Phone and online counselling specifically for suicide-related distress.

• Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636. Support for anxiety, depression, burnout, and caregiver stress.

Domestic, family & safety support

• 1800RESPECT — 1800 737 732 (24/7). Confidential counselling and referral service for domestic and family violence or related concerns.

• MensLine Australia — 1300 789 978. Support for men dealing with relationship stress, parenting strain, or mental health challenges.

Neurodivergence, disability & carer support

• Carer Gateway (Australia) – practical and emotional support for carers.

• Autism Association of WA / Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect) – autism-specific support and advocacy.

• NDIS participant advocacy services – independent help navigating funding and reviews.

Grief, trauma & post-incident support

• Australian Centre for Grief and Bereavement — 1300 664 786. Counselling and grief resources.

• SANE Australia Helpline — 1800 187 263. Support for complex mental health challenges affecting individuals or families.

Emergency

• If you or someone else is in immediate danger: call 000.