Pictures of the cheeky 22-year-old are everywhere. His Melbourne High School swimming bag hangs on a door handle in the hallway.

Yet his absence feels bigger than the house itself. It is a loss made all the more tragic by the knowledge that it could have been prevented.

This Saturday will mark the first anniversary of his suicide.

The grief is so raw for his mother and older brother they occasionally slip into talking about him in the present tense.

But they are channelling their pain into action, speaking out in the hope that it will highlight the catastrophic failings in Australia's over-stretched mental health system.

"We want to remember his life and also how we lost him. We want to eliminate this loss for other families," his mother Hong Vo said through tears, at her home in Fawkner, in Melbourne's north.

Like many families struggling to support a loved one battling mental illness, when they reached out for help it simply wasn't there.

Referred by a GP to a youth mental health service, Martin was told there would be a month-long wait for an appointment. He would not live long enough to make it.

It is, say mental health experts, an all too common story, particularly for people from culturally and linguistically diverse communities, who face added barriers when accessing services.

The stigma attached to mental illness is often overwhelming, with religious and cultural values, and a sense that their condition will shame the family among the deterrents to seeking help.

Other barriers include a shortage of interpreters and cultural training for healthcare workers – which limits treatment options – and a lack of knowledge among families about how to detect the early signs of mental illness.

Those in the field say governments must stop mental healthcare's narrow focus on "white middle-class Australia" and invest in awareness campaigns, services and research specifically targeted at culturally diverse communities.

"If we don't act we are going to see more families like this losing loved ones," said Associate Professor Harry Minas, head of the global and cultural mental health unit at The University of Melbourne.

"There is a rhetorical commitment to multiculturalism but there is no practical commitment and never any budget allocated to creating services which are actually capable of dealing with the cultural complexity that is Australian society."

For Martin – the youngest son of a Vietnamese mother who came to Australia as a refugee in 1982 – there was no language barrier. He was born here and grew up fluent in three languages.

But Hong, a strong single mother who in 2010 was released without charge after spending 10 days in a Vietnamese prison for taking part in a pro-democracy rally in Hanoi, believes a sense of shame prevented him from revealing he had a problem until it was too late.

Hong Vo in an emotional reunion with her son Martin after returning from Vietnam in 2010. Photo: Justin McManus

On the day of his death, Martin left the family home in the early hours of the morning in his mother's car, drove to a bridge on a nearby freeway and parked on the side of the road. The car was found abandoned with its hazard lights on.

Hong, a social worker, had been vigilant since learning a week earlier her son was suffering from depression. Every day she made sure he ate and slept and got out of bed and exercised. That night she checked on him around 3am.

"He was sound asleep and snoring gently. In the morning I went to wake him up but he wasn't in the bed. I looked around the house, no sign. So I rang him but the phone was at home. I looked out in the driveway and no car."

She then rang her eldest son Daniel, and Martin's long-term girlfriend. Neither had heard from him. Her next call was to the police. Soon, two uniformed officers were at her door.

"They came in and asked me to take a seat and that's how they said to me, 'we found him'."

Martin was a high-achieving, popular young man who had recently graduated from RMIT and was completing an internship in radiology.

During a four-week placement in Ballarat he became convinced he was failing in his new job and struggled with feelings of inadequacy and isolation.

His family are unsure how long he had been suffering but his condition deteriorated rapidly.

Towards the end of his placement, Martin's girlfriend told the family they should intervene because he was talking about ending his life.

"That was a huge shock for Mum and me," Daniel said. "When he got home he was sitting down with his back against the couch and it took him ages to respond, he was really down. We later found out that he wasn't eating, he had been depressed throughout that week but he didn't reach out."

Hong took Martin to a doctor, who despite hearing of his suicidal thoughts, did not recognise the magnitude of the problem and told him he should hang in there and "life will move on."

The GP referred him to Orygen Youth Health – a public mental health service for 15 to 25-year-olds – and he was assessed over the phone. They gave him an appointment for a month's time. Martin took his own life two days later.

Martin Vo was forced to wait a month for help when he expressed suicidal thoughts. Photo: Tien Nguyen

Professor Patrick McGorry, former Australian of the Year and executive director of Orygen's National Centre of Excellence in Youth Mental Health, expressed "enormous sympathy" for the family and said mental health services were suffering "a death of a thousand cuts", forcing Orygen to turn away more than 1100 needy young people every year.

"​These people simply cannot wait and the risk of dying is significant. Imagine if this were happening for people with chest pain and possible heart attack."

On Saturday, to mark the anniversary of Martin's death, the family will hold Here to Hear, an event which Daniel hopes will break down stigma and raise awareness of mental health problems in the Vietnamese community.

"There's a lot of pride, a lot of saving face within Asian culture. Your parents work hard and have sacrificed so much for us to be here and I think for Martin it was a combination of the issue of the culture and stigma and being a man you want to be the money-maker, the pillar of the family."

"I don't think I'd ever talked about suicide before Martin. We want to get the youth involved and engaged to talk about it so we can make a change. This will be Martin's legacy. "

Professor Minas said governments would only act when families began to take legal action against health departments.

"If someone has a bad outcome because either the clinical staff were not adequately trained in cultural matters or they didn't have an interpreter made available when an interpreter was required or because they were denied a therapy because of communication issues then I regard that as negligent."

For Hong, the death of her son has left an unfathomable gap. But she hopes that it will not be in vain and families from the Vietnamese and other migrant communities will learn from the tragedy.

"People die from suicide and they are still blamed. Their families live in shame of that. It is wrong. We want to help people not to have to go through this. The loss is too big."

For help contact:

• Lifeline 131 114
• beyondblue 1300 224 636
• SuicideLine 1300 651 251 

Here to Hear will take place at 2.30pm on October 17, Drill Hall, Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth Street.

jstark@fairfaxmedia.com.au

Follow Jill on Twitter