From the Wellness Centre

World Mental Health Day – Our Minds Our Rights

It was World Mental Health Day this week, Tuesday 10 October. There is such a vast and sustained focus on our mental health these days – alarming statistics, research papers, gazetted days and weeks, themed events… that we cannot ignore these messages. 

You might remember that RUOK Day’s theme on 14 September was “I’m here to hear.” Essentially this was the phrase that illuminated the mental fitness conversation, those few minutes that can save a life. Indeed, the lives saved might well be a loved one or a dear colleague or acquaintance, or neighbour. Why? 

R U OK? conducted research to understand what a meaningful conversation looks like for Australians and came up with three common factors:

1. Trust: People are more likely to open up to someone they are close to and trust.
2. Authenticity: People are more likely to open up if they know someone genuinely wants to hear what they have to say.
3. Environment: Place is key to feeling safe and opening up. A private space is preferred, with no time restrictions.

 Launching new R U OK? resources last month, CEO Katherine Newton emphasised the importance of creating space to have meaningful conversations:

“By taking time for an R U OK? conversation and genuinely listening with an open mind, we can all help the people in our world feel supported and connected."

The R U OK? model for approaching these conversations is ALEC:

1. Ask
2. Listen
3. Encourage Action
4. Check in

“Choose a time and a place where you can give your full attention, free of distractions. A walk in the park, a sit down over coffee, a quiet night in. Let people in your world know you are here to really hear,” she said.

Great Southern Grammar participated in RUOK week in myriad ways – via prompts, activities, messages, links and such like in Daily Notices and at Assemblies. I believe that RUOK is a recurring, ongoing focus here on campus as our mental health literacy and help seeking increases while stigmatised beliefs and attitudes decrease.

More about World Mental Health Day/Week...

As a community vanguard for World Mental Health Week, last Friday, headspace Albany mounted another, the seventh in fact, brilliant Mad Hatter Tea Party in the town square, where many local community groups and agencies foregrounded mental health in a bid to reduce the stigma of talking about mental health and reaching out for support.

In the manuals which accompany the Mental Health First Aid Training courses I offer, mental health is defined by the World Health Organisation as “a state of wellbeing in which the individual realises their own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to their community”.

According to the website, World Health Organisation World Mental Day:

“is an opportunity for people and communities to unite behind the theme Mental health is a universal human right to improve knowledge, raise awareness and drive actions that promote and protect everyone’s mental health as a universal human right. Mental health is a basic human right for all people. Everyone, whoever and wherever they are, has a right to the highest attainable standard of mental health. This includes the right to be protected from mental health risks, the right to available, accessible, acceptable, and good quality care, and the right to liberty, independence and inclusion in the community. Good mental health is vital to our overall health and well-being. Yet one in eight people globally are living with mental health conditions, which can impact their physical health, their well-being, how they connect with others, and their livelihoods. Mental health conditions are also affecting an increasing number of adolescents and young people.”

Hark the catchphrase for this year’s World Mental Health Week: Our Minds Our Rights. Repeat and repeat… 

More details can be found here World Mental Health Day 2023 (who.int)

Level Playing Ground – Reconciliation and Molly Schmidt’s Remarkable Novel 

The graphics below draw our attention to the very unlevel “playing field” upon which we humans exist. There are innumerable variables that influence our mental health/fitness, our ability to thrive, to access services, to be educated, to manage setbacks and disappointments, to have personal agency, to feel worthy... 

The first graphic circulated during the COVID years, as many of you would remember, obviously emphasises resource inequity during a pandemic. The second graphic perhaps asks us to consider how socio-economic-political systems address fair and reasonable resource distribution, or not. 

Reconciliation Australia’s vision is for a just, equitable and reconciled Australia. Their purpose is to inspire and enable all Australians to contribute to the reconciliation of the nation.

Which brings me to Molly Schmidt (Wilson, 2012), and her astonishing novel Salt River Road. This incredible book won the TAG Hungerford Award 2022, (presented to an emerging West Australian writer for their first full-length, unpublished work of fiction or narrative non-fiction) from a field of more than 90 entries. Molly describes writing this book as an act of reconciliation.

I was very fortunate to attend the global launch of Molly’s remarkable novel in Albany.

WA Today describes Salt River Road in the following excerpt:

“Schmidt’s book is about WA regional teenagers Rose and Frank Tetley, whose worlds fall apart when their mother dies. Their sheep farm goes to ruins as grief incapacitates Eddie, their father. When Noongar Elders Patsy and Herbert find Rose running away, marching along the highway away from the mess, they take her home in a storm of red gravel dust that brings up memories Eddie Tetley would rather forget.”

On the launch night at Albany Town Hall, it was profoundly moving to witness the visceral and spiritual connections between the Indigenous Elders and Molly. 

Her publisher Fremantle Press states:

“Molly Schmidt is a writer and journalist from the coastal town of Albany, Western Australia. An only child, she grew up roaming paddocks and climbing paperbark trees on Menang Noongar country. Storytelling has been part of Molly’s world since she could speak. When she was ten years old, her father lost his battle with terminal cancer. Molly began writing to process this loss, and through written word has found healing, growth and her life path. Throughout both her journalism career and novel writing practice, Molly is passionate about producing stories that are inclusive of all members of her community. While writing Salt River Road, she collaborated with Noongar Elders from Albany, with the goal of producing a novel that actively pursues reconciliation between non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal peoples. Molly completed a thesis on the topic at Curtin University in 2021, supervised by Professor Kim Scott and Dr Brett D’Arcy, for which she received First Class Honours. This novel, Salt River Road, is the recipient of the 2022 City of Fremantle Hungerford Award. By day, Molly works as a radio producer and journalist for the ABC, where her passion for storytelling is put to good use. Drawn to the coast, Molly now lives in Fremantle where she enjoys free time wandering the beach and local coffee shops with her dog, Rupi.”

It is my sincere and solemn hope that our work as educators and influencers of young people at this seat of learning, Great Southern Grammar, might be considered “active reconciliation”. 

Conversations about Non Suicidal Self Injury 

When: Friday 3 November, 9.00am to 1.00pm 

Where: Albany Library 

Cost: Nil as sponsors are GSG and Palmerston

Register your interest at sheryl.moncur@gsg.wa.edu.au or phone 9844 0344 

Numbers will be capped at 16 – we have 10 registered already.

See flyers for more information.

Claire Eaton

A FREE parent information session with author, speaker and Youth Coach, Claire Eaton.

Join Claire for an evening of practical information, strategies, tips and tools to help tweens transition to high school with more resilience, optimism, and confidence.

A not to be missed opportunity for our families.

Wise Minds

See flyer for this fantastic initiative from our headspace Albany.

Yours in trying to maintain Mental Fitness

Ms Sheryl Moncur | School Counsellor & Teacher