ring Your Voice - Consumers of Mental Health WA · from medical jargon into everyday conversations....

Bring Your Voice LIVED EXPERIENCE PERSPECTIVES FOR

BETTER MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING

2017 REPORT TO OUR NEW STATE GOVERNMENT

REPORT AND VIDEO AVAILABLE TO SHARE AT WWW.COMHWA.ORG.AU

1 CoMHWA. 2017. Bring Your Voice Report. http://www.comhwa.org.au

Foreword: Message from the CEO

CoMHWA’s BringYourVoice Forum was held on 10th March 2017 at Youth Head Quarters

Leederville. We brought people together to share ideas for improving mental health and

wellbeing, drawing on the wisdom of their lived experience of mental health distress and

recovery, and contributing to a welcoming peer-led community event.

We are proud to present their views through this Report to the Minister for Mental Health,

Hon. Roger Cook MLA, the Mental Health Commission of Western Australia, and to the

broader sector and community.

The overarching finding of this Report is that mental health solutions lie far more in growing

resilience and everyday life opportunities for people who are impacted by mental health

issues. There may be a role for clinical and hospital supports for people, but most of the

recovery journey for people occurs beyond clinic doors, and this is where investment will

build better futures.

Our Bring Your Voice Video captures how mental health is worth taking care of within

ourselves, and supporting the people around us. It captures key themes shared at the Forum.

Above all, it highlights the hope and resilience of people who are meeting the challenges of

distress…and emerging stronger.

We hope that Bring Your Voice will inspire everyone who is contributing to mental health in

Western Australia as they continue to affirm recovery and the value of people’s lived

experience in bringing about greater mental health and wellbeing.

Shauna Gaebler

Chief Executive Officer

CoMHWA

http://www.comhwa.org.au/


TOWARDS BETTER

MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING

Recovery: Medication is not Enough

Choice and Control Supports Recovery

More of the Right Services and Supports

Create More Safe Spaces for Recovery

Discover Recovery Support Recovery Put the Person at the Centre of Supports

Solve Mental Health Together as a Community

Reduce Service Stigma Remove Barriers to Person-Led Recovery

Increase Access to Peer Support Make System Navigation Easier

Achieve Greater Inclusion of People with Diverse Needs

Innovate Our Emergency Supports Innovate Our Housing

Remove the Stigma Bring More Education to Communities

Reach Out to Support Gain the Skills to Help Change Lives



Introduction:

Towards Better Mental Health and Wellbeing

This Report reflects the quotes, comments and themes expressed by people attending CoMHWA’s 2017 Bring

Your Voice Pre-Election Forum (10th March 2017). The Forum was held by and for people with past or present

lived experience of psychological and/or emotional distress who were united in hope for change and recovery in

our services and communities. Sixty six people from a range of ages, backgrounds and walks of life came to share

their views.

This report has woven people’s comments into a narrative. The people’s stories echo those many of us calling for

a more humane, empowering and compassionate view of mental health and the support we need. The Report

shows the importance of recovery for so many people and the common ground that emerges when we meet

together, as people, who know what it takes because at some point we’ve struggled.

We wish to acknowledge and thank participants who shared their time to make the Forum possible, including

participants, volunteers, performers, photographers, videographers and people who shared their stories.

Bring Your Voice Forwards - Connect with CoMHWA

There will be ongoing opportunities to take these ideas forwards and we look forward to meeting and working

together again. This report is not just about sharing our perspectives but believing it is possible to make changes

together.

Contact CoMHWA on (08) 9258 8911 or [email protected] to find out more about:

Writing to politicians about the issues you care about.

Becoming a lived experience representative, advocate or peer support worker.

Bringing education to your local community.

Starting something in your local community to support good mental health.

Sharing your word of mouth knowledge and recommendations about supports and services.


mailto:[email protected]


1. RECOVERY

Discover Recovery

Participants saw recovery as holistic; it is about getting life back on track rather than just being medicated.

Recovery often involves learning, access to opportunities to grow, and tapping into more diverse community

supports, including peer support, advocacy, specialist therapeutic approaches, work and housing supports,

pastimes and social connections.

Services can assist people by encouraging and assisting people to locate mental health recovery education

options.

Consumer participation in the design of services and service policy was recommended as a key way for

supporting the uptake of a more holistic approach.

Support Recovery

Participants of the Forum were asked to share tips for recovery and wellbeing and their responses are useful

for people supporting others with lived experience, such as families, friends and clinical staff.

Recovery: Medication Is Not Enough

“Mental illness is not a failure…it’s a beginning. A start to

discovering something extraordinary about yourself! You

care. That is the greatest gift that anyone can have.”

BRING YOUR VOICE PARTICIPANT



The following key themes of Recovery were captured:

Developing skills, acceptance and resilience

Learning about stigma and discrimination can help people to recognize stigma and feel more confident

to speak up when things aren’t right.

Courses can assist people to get on track through understanding and taking personal steps towards

recovery, such as Wellness Recovery Action Planning, Flourish and Peer Zone.

Accessing the right supports

There is conversation…and then there’s conversation [really talking about how you feel]. Asking for

help is not a sign of weakness or of failure. It is courageous to seek help.

Services can be difficult to navigate but there are information lines that can help.

Finding hope through connection

Consider participation in peer support or group support, or approach a friend, community worker or

family member who will listen.

“However dark or lonely you may feel, there are others with lived experience who will know,

understand and respect you if you reach out.”

Valuing our individuality and our strength

“Regardless of what you are suffering, you are still you and you are important.”

Peer support can help people to recognize that everyone affected is unique, different and has

something to give back to others.

Put the Person at the Centre of Supports

Good communication empowers people in their recovery. Partners in a person’s recovery include; family

members including the children of people with mental health issues, doctors, GPs, social services, and

community supports. Communication between these supports should be encouraged by everyone involved,

led by the person themselves, and aim to ‘wrap around’ and assist them as they get their life back on track.

“I want to be able to have a second opinion

before being on medications.”




2. CHOICE AND CONTROL

Choice and Control Supports Recovery

Reduce Service Stigma

Stigma and discrimination can occur in a range of services people access, including mental health services and

physical health providers. The key issues in services that maintain stigma were cited as:

Seeing only the medical side of things rather than the whole person.

Ignoring someone’s need for help because they have mental health concerns not physical illnesses.

Focusing on people as ill, impaired or deficient instead of on their strengths as individuals.

Remove Barriers to Person-Led Recovery

Some participants expressed frustration at gatekeeping where the person is not allowed to access housing or

employment support because they don’t meet defined criteria for ‘recovery’. For example, a person may need

to agree to a contract to take part in services that aren’t of value to them, otherwise they are seen to not be

‘engaging’ in the service’s definition of recovery.

Recovery happens through offering, not limiting, people’s choice and control to access supports to get life back

on track.

“When I was discharged…after a suicide attempt I was not

given any information about services, supports or

organisations that could have helped in recovery…It’s been a

very lonely journey.”



3. BETTER APPROACHES

More of the Right Services and Supports

Increase Access to Peer Support

Peer support was valued for offering individual support, assisting with goalsetting and for breaking through

from medical jargon into everyday conversations. This means services need to increase their employment of

the peer workforce (roles where lived experience is an essential, valued job criteria).

Achieve Greater Inclusion of People with Diverse Needs

Everyone should have access to mental health care regardless of identity or community. There is a need for

greater inclusion of people in our diversity within services, including young people, older adults, GLBTI, CALD

and Aboriginal community members. Each person can bring multiple, diverse identities that should be

recognised, valued and accepted by services. A participant shared that now that the sector is seeking to

address the needs of people with mental health and substance use issues, it’s time to include “people with

mental health problems and intellectual disabilities, and to hear the views of young people with disabilities”.

Make System Navigation Easier

Information on mental health services and supports is hard to find and hard to access. There is a need for one

or more centralized information directories. These should focus on people’s holistic needs and interests to

support their mental health and recovery (e.g. employment, recreation and education), not just mental health

services. Other suggestions raised for improving access were: more affordable support, better referral system

and greater availability of community support.

“Accessing mental health support and crisis/homeless

housing as a Trans person was next to impossible, even in

an emergency (like suicide) I was turned away.”



4. SAFER SUPPORTS

Create More Safe Spaces for Recovery

‘Safe spaces’ refers to both safe places for people to live, stay or visit for their recovery, including emergency

mental health settings. It also includes safe communities where people can be open and seek support (see

Community themes later in this Report).

There is a related concept of cultural safety that sees the provision of services and supports that respect, value,

and work with people’s experience of the cultural dimensions of mental health to ensure a safe experience.

Examples of cultural aspects of mental health include the experience of shame, stigma or disempowerment

that are laden in deficit-based models, and how our understanding of the causes of mental health depends

on our upbringing, the meaning we make of distress, and our cultural backgrounds.

In general, people feel safe when they feel welcome. Having a peaceful, homelike and comfortable

environment, with people who value and welcome others can reduce shame and worry about seeking help.

Innovate Our Emergency Supports

Participants felt that crisis and recovery support should be suited to each individual’s needs. The range of

innovative and practical suggestions for improving emergency support included the following:

Safety is “where there is no assault, challenge or denial of

our identity, of who we are, and we need. It is about shared

respect[,]…learning, living and working together with dignity

and truly listening.”

DEFINITION OF CULTURAL SAFETY- ADAPTED FROM T. WILLIAMS



INNOVATING OUR EMERGENCY SUPPORTS

A quiet room to feel safe when

presented to emergency

Improved mental health recovery

and wellbeing education for staff

working in acute hospitals

Better portability of key medical

information about the person at

various points of the health system

Access to consumer oriented

recovery plans from day one

Consumer and family member

access to education while in the

hospital

Commmunity- based mental health

education and wellbeing centres

co-located with other community

services, to encourage early help

seeking, normalize mental health

and assist to navigate services

Widely available information

about how to access

emergency support options

Respite accommodation as an

alternative to hospital

Better care after leaving hospital

through more services in the

community

Improved community referring

while in hospital/emergency

department

Increase in other crisis care

supports such as housing and

counselling

A mental health emergency

department

Peer workers in emergency

departments

More follow up on discharge to

reduce re-admission

Better support and communication

between a range of health

providers, consumers and carers to

assist in navigating crisis and

recovery support



Innovate Our Housing

Homelessness was described as a huge issue faced by Western Australians. A participant commented that

women with mental health issues are increasingly going into women’s refuges as homelessness is a crisis

situation in their lives. Homelessness was acknowledged as something that you are more at risk at if you have

mental health issues, but was also seen as causing mental health issues in our community.

Participants raised a number of principles to consider in solving the challenges of housing:

1. No one size fits all.

People’s accommodation needs are individual. Accommodation solutions are not necessarily designed

to meet whole of family needs or to support people with mental health and intellectual disability.

2. More than a roof.

Moving from homelessness to housing is more than a roof. It means getting the supports in place that

the person needs to maintain the home and live well in the community e.g. cooking, coping with

neighbors, linking in with local community, finding friends, getting out and not being isolated. Moving

from longer term shared accommodation to independent accommodation is also more than a roof. It

can be scary and you need similar supports to someone moving from homelessness to housing

(supports to live well in the community).

3. Re-design more welcoming services.

The housing support system is hard to navigate and having a safe place to go to learn about options

and access supports with paperwork is important.

Flexibility, transparency and responsiveness is essential to prevent mental health discrimination in

housing. A participant commented they felt bullied and excluded in the way they were treated by

Department of Housing staff while another felt they had no information privacy.

4. Design for meaningful living.

Housing needs to be located and designed for safety, community inclusion and access to local services

and supports.



5. Intervening early matters.

Housing is crisis-oriented where you need to be already homeless and have lost your job, rather than

geared to preventing and addressing homelessness early and keeping people in work. Having someone

to turn to early when your housing gets stressful can solve issues before they become major problems

that could result in homelessness. For example, some group accommodation and homeless drop in

centres are unsafe for people due to alcohol and other drug use or bullies that try to extort the person.

A Housing First/Street to Home approach can prevent people’s situations becoming worse. By

providing a home that prevents people going into unsafe accommodation a further crisis can be

prevented.

6. Create more welcoming communities through mainstreaming mental health understanding and

acceptance.

Mental health discrimination is hard to quantify but was a common theme in housing discussions.

Discrimination can range from the allocation of inappropriate housing, the fear of stigma from

flatmates, the risk of being evicted, and having police called to the home due to neighbors not

understanding how to respond to someone behaving in an unusual way.

Many people with mental health issues find it hard to cope with the challenges of private share

housing, but rely on these arrangements to prevent becoming homeless as they cannot afford

their own rental. More options to access affordable single accommodation is needed rather than

trying to fit people into co-living arrangements that are not appropriate for their individual needs.

Support for people to find and maintain shared tenancies that are socially supportive and accept

people with lived experience is important. Share houses can be disruptive, stressful and leave

someone feeling stigmatized if they disclose their mental health status. Several participants shared

that they would like support in how to talk with and educate their neighbours, landlords and flat

mates about their mental health needs, so that they can feel welcome and accepted by those they

live near and live with.



5. WHOLE COMMUNITY

Remove the Stigma

Mental health stigma and discrimination has persisted for decades. It affects day to day living, employment

and housing and can also be internalized (self-stigma) resulting in feelings of shame and low self-worth.

Participants strongly linked stigma to the need for much greater action to educate communities so that people

can recognize the signs, accept people with mental health issues, and support people to seek help and take

action for recovery.

People can experience stigma and discrimination because of diverse backgrounds that can compound

misunderstanding and exclusion. There may be a need to educate communities by and for people from diverse

backgrounds to support communities to respond better, such as providing education for and by seniors to

other seniors, and similar options for and by young people.

Peer-based support is vitally important to reducing stigma and as a path to education between community

members. Sharing stories of recovery was identified as a helpful way to both raise awareness and reduce

stigma in our communities, encouraging people to reach out and people with lived experience to feel more

confident to talk about mental health.

Solve Mental Health Together As a Community

“We need to make sure children are okay and supported

when their parents are needing mental health support.”




Bring More Education to Communities

Mental health education should be recovery-focused and build people’s abilities to look after their mental

health. It should assist people to reach out and offer support to others, and help people gain the skills to have

conversations that reach out, assist recovery and save lives at risk of suicide.

Some participants were in favour of educating as early as possible, to build tools for resilience (coping with

life’s challenges) and reduce the risk of mental health issues later on in life.

Too often stigma reduction and mental health education is focused on a medical model of illness. To share a

message of recovery, distress may be better understood as a normal response to life challenges with education

refocusing on ways to regain resilience, strength and empowerment.

Mental health education needs to be accessible in language as well as location, and emphasize the role of self-

help, families reaching out to help the people they support, and supporting one another as community

members.

Methods for achieving education that were explored

and seen as useful included multi-media, online

training as well as face to face, increased media

coverage of recovery, and more public forums

where people could share information and seek

assistance.

Reach Out to Offer Support

An important part of recovery that people found was

to have someone you trust to reach out to, and to

have a safe place to go to start addressing something

that feels stressful or overwhelming.

Everyone can play a role in being a safe person to go

to through showing respect, listening and

understanding. It’s not about knowing how to solve

things necessarily, but being prepared to walk

alongside, assist someone or be someone others can

confide in.

“I found a good support

network…Sometimes

people are not aware of

what support is out there.

Being involved in art

programs…was a huge part

of my recovery.”

BRING YOUR VOICE

PARTICIPANT



Gain the Skills to Help Save Lives

Education to develop acceptance and skills was seen as important in order to;

Build better social inclusion and equal opportunities.

Pursue careers and study.

Get the right housing.

Have a strong social networks of friends, colleagues and associates.

These are the sorts of things we all want to experience and enjoy, but mental health issues can be a barrier to

mutual understanding, trust and asking for help when we need it.

It was suggested that employers could gain greater understanding of how to value and support people to

contribute in the workplace, such as through offering flexi-time arrangements.

Some participants felt there were more volunteering opportunities than genuine paid work opportunities for

people with lived experience, which can keep people trapped with low incomes. This suggests poor

understanding about mental health issues, such as discrimination-based beliefs that people can’t fully

participate in the workplace.

It was also recommended that Centrelink staff could be supported to have a greater understanding that people

with lived experience can work with the right supports, but also that people may need greater choice and

control in paths (and alternatives) to employment as part of their recovery.

Overall, education was seen as an important way to help people to feel confident and skilled to navigate what

to do and how to have a conversation when mental health issues arise, across a range of life scenarios where

good communication is vital to good relationships, fairness and equal opportunities.


ring Your Voice - Consumers of Mental Health WA · from medical jargon into everyday conversations....

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