News anchor suicide, Australian reporter jumps to Death

The "beautiful and bubbly" Dragun plunged to her demise at The Gap - a notorious suicide location in Sydney's East.

Channel 10 newsreader Charmaine Dragun was successful, intelligent, talented and popular.

The 29-year-old seemed to have it all - a loving family, a long-term relationship and a stellar career as a prime-time news anchor.

Yet on Friday the "beautiful and bubbly" Dragun jumped to her death at The Gap - a notorious suicide spot in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.

Family, friends and colleagues are stunned, struggling to understand what could have prompted such a tragic decision.

Dragun took her life just hours before she was due to read the 5pm Perth news bulletin from the network's Sydney studios alongside co-anchor Tim Webster.

A shocked Webster said: "She was going great, we thought", while fellow Ten newsreader Deborah Knight described Dragun's death as "completely unexpected".

"No one had any idea how sad she must have been," she said at the weekend. "People are now wondering if we should have taken more interest in what was going on in her life."

The fact that suicide often comes out of the blue is a reminder that profound private suffering can lurk behind even the brightest personality.

Unlike many physical illnesses, depression is often easy to conceal.

And if someone is determined enough to keep up a positive front, even those closest to them may not realise the extent of their despair.

"It can be surprising why someone who seemingly has so many things ahead of them would do such a thing," says Associate Professor Michael Baigent, clinical adviser to national organisation aimed at addressing depression beyondblue.

"They can often put on a brave front until it's too late, which is the tragedy of it all."

Those who are the most successful often put the greatest pressure on themselves to achieve - but, worryingly, also believe they can't afford to let their problems show.

"People who have high expectations of themselves, you might call them perfectionists, will often be very hard on themselves," Baigent says.

"They don't let on (that they need help); it makes them feel weaker."

Still shy of her 30th birthday, Dragun had risen through the ranks of a highly competitive industry, to secure one of the most sought-after positions in television news.

She was a rising star with opportunities stretching out before her.

But success brings its own pressures and the fear of failure can be hard to shake.

In a society driven by competition, where the young are especially impatient to prove themselves and forge ahead professionally, that kind of constant pressure can have devastating consequences.

Those who have lost someone to suicide are often left with feelings of guilt overlying their grief and a need to know why it happened.

The search for explanations can be particularly difficult when someone has chosen to end a life which, to all outward appearances, had so much promise and was going so well.

However, as Baigent points out: "It's not necessarily just your achievements and successes in life that make you happy."

2GB radio presenter Jason Morrison, Ten's former news editor, told the LiveNews website that Dragun moved from Perth to Sydney after the "promotion of a lifetime", but noted that it came at a price.

"It also meant turning her life around and starting from scratch in a new town," he said.

In an interview last year Dragun spoke of difficulties in relocating from Western Australia - where she was born and raised.

"I have a real love-hate relationship with Sydney," she said.

"It would be hard to imagine being away from my family and bringing up a family over there, but we'll have to see what it all brings."

Kelly Nestor, who was formerly based in Melbourne as a Ten newsreader for Adelaide, recalled feeling cut off from family and community.

"I feel very strongly about this," Nestor said. "It's a bad management decision to dislocate someone from their audience.

'You have no contact with your audience or connection with your community. You watch your colleagues in the office getting invites and you feel like a second-class citizen because no one in that city knows who you are."

A friend who worked with Dragun in Perth said she had recently talked about "issues" she was having in Sydney, and discussed returning to her hometown one day.

Colleagues paid tribute over the weekend to the "bubbly and beautiful" Dragun, saying she was "genuinely loved and admired by everyone".

But it's possible the newsreader did not see herself that way.

Depression tends to warp people's perceptions, so that all sufferers can see is the tunnel without the light at the end.

"It's an illness that clouds the way you see yourself and people around you, the way you see your future," Baigent explains.

"External indicators of success, or apparent success to other people, doesn't always stack up with how that person feels about themselves.

"Someone can be the most successful person in your view . . . but in their own perspective they don't see it that way - there's doom and gloom on the horizon."

Dragun's grieving family said they were going through a challenging time but wanted her remembered "as an angel that brought joy and light to everyone she met".

The tragedy is, she may have been unable to hold onto that light and joy for herself.

• Australia
• suicide
• news anchor
• Sydney