1. Charmaine Margaret Dragun was an Australian broadcast journalist and presenter.
19 Facts About Charmaine Dragun
1. 2.
Charmaine Dragun graduated from the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts with a degree in broadcast journalism.
3.
Charmaine Dragun began her career as a radio journalist and newsreader at Perth radio stations 6PR and 96FM.
4.
Charmaine Dragun was nominated for Young Journalist of the Year and won both the Australian and state Best Radio Reports award.
5.
Charmaine Dragun switched from radio to television when she was offered a position at Network Ten.
6.
Charmaine Dragun started out reporting a wide range of stories from entertainment news to major national news stories and eventually began court reporting regularly.
7.
Charmaine Dragun occasionally filled in as a presenter on Perth's Ten News First and on 4 July 2005, she was appointed as permanent news anchor for the show, which was broadcast from Network Ten's Sydney studio TEN at Pyrmont, New South Wales.
8.
Charmaine Dragun was a main co-anchor of Ten News First and filled in on the national morning and weekend news bulletins and presented Sports Tonight on Fridays.
9.
Charmaine Margaret Dragun was born in Perth, Western Australia to Estelle and Michael Dragun.
10.
Charmaine Dragun was engaged to Simon Struthers, a forensic investigator, whom she had been dating since she was 16 years old, and they were planning to marry on Charmaine Dragun's 30th birthday.
11.
In 2004, eight months before moving to Sydney, Charmaine Dragun told her mother that her medication made her feel numb and she started seeing a psychiatrist who recommended that Charmaine Dragun discontinue medication altogether.
12.
Charmaine Dragun's mother said that Dragun's symptoms started to go "down hill" after six weeks off antidepressants.
13.
Charmaine Dragun moved back home with her parents and temporarily ended her relationship with Struthers, stating that she could not give him happiness.
14.
Charmaine Dragun had difficulty adjusting to the new city and being so far from family.
15.
Charmaine Dragun started working with a clinical psychologist there that she reportedly had a good rapport with, according to Dragun's mother.
16.
Around August or September 2007, Charmaine Dragun's symptoms worsened and her psychologist recommended that Charmaine Dragun consult a psychiatrist about adjusting her medication.
17.
On 2 November 2007, at age 29, Charmaine Dragun committed suicide near The Gap in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs.
18.
Witnesses who had seen someone sitting near the popular suicide spot had contacted the police, but Charmaine Dragun was dead by the time officers arrived.
19.
Charmaine Dragun estimated that Dragun had "almost certainly" been misdiagnosed with depression and had actually had a bipolar II disorder, concluding that she had not received the correct treatment with a mood stabiliser that, in his view, probably would have saved her life.