Mary Coustas shares her mental health story

Written by Ingrid Laurence for Australian Seniors

The woman behind Effie Stephanides 

Logie Award-winning actress, comedian and writer Mary Coustas is famous for creating one of Australia’s best-loved characters, Effie Stephanides, the outrageous hairdresser with Greek heritage and a loud mouth. But for 60-year-old Mary, her alter ego is much more than just a role she has nurtured for almost four decades.

Effie is a mouthpiece for the star to express so much of what she wants to say to the world. And talking frankly about things that matter to us is a vital way to maintain our mental health, says Mary.

“One level of the therapeutic process is to be able to put it outside of yourself somewhere, whether it’s in talking or in writing,” she tells host James Valentine on the fifth season of the award-winning Australian Seniors podcast, Life’s Booming: Is This Normal?. “My whole career has been about dispelling taboos, and talking about the difficult things. And I wrap it in a capsule of comedy and that’s what makes people happy. And it’s what makes me happy. And that’s my antidepressant.”

With ageing comes mental resilience 

Mary has faced significant challenges across the years. As a child she encountered racism after she moved with her Greek migrant parents to a new area of Melbourne. “I was very confident growing up in a working -class multicultural suburb,” she explains. “And then when I was nine we moved as a family and unfortunately I was the little seed from the multigrain that made it into a very white area.”

She found confidence in performing. “The minute I stood on stage during my high school years, I just went, okay, this is my stage, and this is where I can express myself,” says Mary, who debuted Effie in the groundbreaking show Wogs Out of Work in 1987. 

“That was the thing that changed the conversation in Australia. It was such a humongous stage show that addressed the elephant in the cultural room, and then discovered that the elephant was the best thing ever. And there were lots of elephants and there were giraffes and big lions and so I think the world has changed. Well, certainly mine has.”

Behind the scenes, however, came more pain. Mary underwent years of IVF and grieved the stillbirth of her first child, before finally welcoming her daughter Jamie with husband George Betsis in 2013. Almost immediately, though, she went through menopause. “I came to motherhood late. And then after I gave birth to my daughter, I was going through menopause, but because women are so accustomed to discomfort sometimes we don’t connect the dots enough.”

Happily, she has also discovered that with ageing comes mental resilience. “You feel more yourself with age. You’ve worked through what matters and what doesn’t, and hopefully you’ve found a healthy place to put what you’ve learned, either in practice or out there into the world,” Mary says.

“Sometimes you just have to force yourself to get on your feet and keep moving. I just think that a lot of people are terribly lonely and a lifetime can yield a lot of upset and grief and loss. Potential loss of physical capacity, loss of people you’ve loved, loss of opportunity, loss of all of those things.

“And there are also so many great joys. And if you can get to those highs, you’re going to get to those lows. That’s why campaigns like R U OK? Day and all of those beautiful things that people have put out there, just to remind ourselves that some days are going to be better than others.”

Mary is inspired by her Greek community when it comes to managing her own mental health. “I spend a lot of time in Greece, I’ve got a house there and all my family apart from my mum and my brother are in Greece. The men meet every day and have coffee. Every day. They talk about everything. “ We’re not supposed to get through this stuff alone. We’re born in communities and surrounded by people, and we should take complete advantage of that.” 

What a clinical psychologist says about ageing and mental health

Dr Charlotte Keating works as a clinical psychologist in private practice, and acts as a spokesperson and mental health advocate across the media. She explains that by the time they reach their older years, many Australians have experienced life events like cultural differences, grief or loss that might lead to mental health issues, but they don’t always have the same tools taught to the younger generation to help them deal with it.

“One in six people across their lifespan will experience some sort of mental health challenge, be it depression or anxiety. It’s incredibly common,” Dr Keating says. “And by the time people have lived multiple decades on the planet, there is a sense of stressful life events and experiences that they’ve all had. They have also had less exposure to the sorts of knowledge, awareness and information that younger Australians have today.”

Many seniors might go to their GP and say they are feeling tired, or have a lot of adrenaline, but not necessarily link these symptoms with mental health. “We might feel off for a couple of weeks and just put it to the back of our mind and keep going. In fact if you do have a chat to your GP, you might have been feeling not quite yourself for months, maybe even years.”

What she particularly sees with the older age group is people suffering from grief. “We are biological and physical beings, it’s important to be able to express it. And so I would recommend if there is grief you’re going through, that’s really persistent, very painful and difficult, I’d recommend having a chat with your GP about it, or if a loved one you can see is experiencing that, try and talk with them about it.”