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Showing posts from September, 2016

A moment in time, I hope, will make a real difference in mental health for Australians

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There are moments in life that you know will remain earmarked pages of your story long after they have passed.   Professionally and personally, last week was one of those for me, as I was joined by 18 inspiring business and community leaders at the Ambassador’s Briefing for the launch of Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in .  Each of these amazing people remind us that we can all play a role in changing the face of mental health.   Check-in 2016 Ambassadors. Australians don’t currently undertake mental health assessments unless we end up in a GP or Psychologist’s office. It perpetuates the myth that mental health is ok, until it is not ok.  As a Psychologist, I have lost count of the number of people that have wished they’d made life easier for themselves by talking about their own mental health earlier. Society has achieved a lot from increased awareness of mental health – but we are not making much ground in changing mental health, with up to 33% of the population in

A moment in time, I hope, will make a real difference in mental health for Australians

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There are moments in life that you know will remain earmarked pages of your story long after they have passed.   Professionally and personally, last week was one of those for me, as I was joined by 18 inspiring business and community leaders at the Ambassador’s Briefing for the launch of Australia’s Biggest Mental Health Check-in .  Each of these amazing people remind us that we can all play a role in changing the face of mental health.   Check-in 2016 Ambassadors. Australians don’t currently undertake mental health assessments unless we end up in a GP or Psychologist’s office. It perpetuates the myth that mental health is ok, until it is not ok.  As a Psychologist, I have lost count of the number of people that have wished they’d made life easier for themselves by talking about their own mental health earlier. Society has achieved a lot from increased awareness of mental health – but we are not making much ground in changing mental health, with up to 33% of the population in

Wanted: A moment, a mate and you. RU OK Day 2016

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R U Ok day is one of the most significant days of the year for mental health - for a lot of reasons.    Imagine telling our great-grandparents when they were young that one day we would be able to talk  to a device and have it tell us where the nearest movie is, send a drone out to see what the surf is like and google a street view of Paris from your lounge-room. But we would have to have a public awareness campaign to ask people to have a conversation to see how each other were really going?   What if we told our great-grandparents that cars would have airbags, anti-slip technology and eye-blinking sensors to notify us when we were beginning to nod off in vehicles, but the greatest cause of death in under 45 year olds would become the thousands of people every year quietly taking their own lives. Conversation – really checking in with someone, has become a bit like one of those National Geographic documentaries where salmon swim up the stream and not down it. Sending a