Kintsugi Heroes
The Intersection of Pain and Power: How OCD Led Jetha Devapura to Purpose
Jetha Devapura
An engineer who hid OCD for 25 years discovers that self-worth, not mental health labels, is what keeps people from drowning.
Kintsugi Studio
Kintsugi Heroes
Jetha Devapura
An engineer who hid OCD for 25 years discovers that self-worth, not mental health labels, is what keeps people from drowning.
You don't have to be in crisis to call.
Jetha Devapura spent 25 years hiding obsessive compulsive disorder while climbing the corporate ladder as an engineer. He describes OCD as a ritualistic addiction, where anxiety drags you to the next compulsive check, over and over. The real breaking point came not from the diagnosis itself, but from isolation. Working overseas, cut off from family and friends, something gave way. Yet Jetha had been shaped by something stronger: his mother's solo arrival in Australia to set up a home, jobs, and schools for her family. His father's quiet compassion. A moment at age 11 when two Australian kids asked where he parked his elephant, and he answered back without flinching. These things built something in him.
Then he walked into a cancer hospital in Colombo and saw mothers and children sleeping on floors between chemotherapy sessions. He couldn't walk away. What started as a simple fundraiser for anti-nausea medication became the CCC House, a 194-bed transit home named after the three virtues that saved him: courage, compassion, commitment. He found a fridge magnet with the word "courage" on it and built a life around three C's, understanding them not as therapy but as antidotes. He turned his Prozac into purpose by filling his own self-worth bucket indirectly, helping others.
At 56, the same age his father was when migrating to Australia, Jetha quit his job to start over. He launched Let's Talk, a program that does not focus on mental health labels but on being seen, heard, and valued. The work is about building self-worth deep enough that when hard times hit, you don't bottom out. Pain is normal and natural. The point is not to escape it, but to understand your own power within it.
⚠️ Content advisory: this episode discusses suicide & self-harm prevention, which some listeners may find distressing.
If you need support, you're not alone. Help is available: • Lifeline (24/7 crisis support): 13 11 14 · lifeline.org.au
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