scone.com.auBatyr Brought Back
SCONE High School’s year 12 students fundraised for the organisation batyr to return to their school yesterday to speak about mental health issues among youth.
Polly Yuille, committee member of the Where There’s A Will Foundation said they were excited to see students steering the ideas for learning about mental health well being.
“The philosophy of Where There’s A Will has always been for the students to take ownership of what they found helped and what they thought were good ideas for generating well being in their schools, rather than adults telling them what they want them to sit through,” said Ms Yuille.
“This is a great sign that the students are embracing positive education,” she said.
Batyr Regional Programme Co-ordinator Lucinda Nash only found out the day before the programme about year 12’s efforts and was pleased to know that the programme is helping.
“I was very humbled that we spoke to the year 12’s last year and they fundraised to get us back this year for year 11 and 12 again, for the students to take control and say we want this and value this is really cool,” said Ms Nash.
“I got some great feedback yesterday from the programmes we did last year, it’s quite hard to measure this, a year on stories come out about people who actually did seek help after hearing about our programmes and that’s Where There’s a Will have said they have had quite a lot of parents and young people come to the well being teachers or themselves and said batyr actually did make me get the help that I needed,” she said.
“For every 30 students in Australia there will be seven suffering from a mental health issue, two will seek help so that leaves five suffering in silence. The idea of our programmes is to speak to those five and get them the help that they need and link them with the local support services in school and in the community,” Lucinda Nash said.
The students took it all in while listening to the speakers Amy Devrell and Dom Greenwood who gave personal accounts of their experience with mental health issues.
“I don’t think I looked at a person at any point during that programme that wasn’t locking eyes with me,” Amy Devrell said.
Some of the Scone High School year 12 students with the batyr team.
Back L-R: Brianna Denley, Lucy Brazell, Kim Page, Amy Devrell.
FrontL-R: Xan Hewson, Dom Greenwood and Lucy Nash
The students took away some valuable information to help deal with mental issues, year 12 students Brianna Denley, Lucy Brazell and Kim Page were part of the group to take part in the programme and found the young presenters helpful.
“It’s ok to talk to someone, we are not alone when we are dealing with mental health, the personal experiences, how they shared their stories it shows it does actually happen, it makes it more real,” said Brianna Denley.
“Today gave us some coping strategies that you can do with a friend, someone professional or just do it by yourself,” said Lucy Brazell
“It was good to hear that you don’t need to have a significant experience to experience bad mental health, it can happen to anyone no matter the situation you are in, mental health doesn’t discriminate……I feel like it’s more relatable, it’s not that long ago that they were my age ,” Kim Page said
Dom Greenwood shared his own experiences with the students and selected a feedback form from one of the students which showed the importance of his role in batyr.
“It was very engaging and with the addition of real stories it created a real eye opener, the stories are important because it gives others who are struggling the strength to speak up and reach out for help,” a year 12 student wrote.
To contact batyr go to their website www.batyr.com.au
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