It Takes a Community

IN an Australian first the Where There’s A Will Foundation is bringing a team of experts to Scone to implement a community wide approach to mental health and it requires parents, grandparents, sports coaches, teachers and the whole community to take part.

Professor Toni Noble said while individual schools have successfully used the positive education model, this is the first time it is being implemented in a community and she is hopeful it will result in deceased rates of suicide.

“I think this community will be a lighthouse community that will possibly shine a light on what other communities can achieve, particularly in rural communities who often are quite isolated and often experience real challenges whether it be natural disasters, drought or whatever it might be,” said Prof Noble.

“We’d love parents to come along, to have sporting coaches come would be fantastic, because the same messages about focus on strengths and building relationships and helping kids to be included in a team or in a group is relevant to coaching as well as to teaching,” she said.

Pauline Carrigan front and centre with children at Scone Amateur Basketball Association and coaches Rikki Irwin and Danielle Brown.

“Just like negative emotion and depression can be contagious positive emotion and well-being can also be contagious and we hope that that can be contagious within your community,” she said.

“It is like an inoculation against mental illness,” Toni Noble said.

Pauline Carrigan, whose son Will committed suicide on Christmas Day last year, established the Where There’s A Will Foundation and said the approach they will take is not unlike other health campaigns adopted by communities.

“In 1981 the Cancer Council alerted us to sun cancer and started the slip, slop, slap campaign and while every mother did her best it required the whole community to keep it going so if you were at sport with your football coach he would say ‘get some sunscreen on and a hat’, if you were at school your teacher did it; we are looking at doing the same thing with a community approach to mental health,” Ms Carrigan said.

“Where There’s A Will is bringing experts in positive psychology to Scone and we’re going to present to the community a plan of how we can shift those statistics in this area,” she said.

“We as a community can take the bull by the horns and say let’s do it now, I’m not prepared to wait ten years and put my grandchildren in the same situation my son was put in,” she said.

“This is a gift for this community and they need to step up, it is not good enough to pat the rest of us on the back and say wow you’re doing a great job, because it won’t work if that is the case it has to be a universal shout out,” Pauline Carrigan said.

Some statistics from the Where There’s A Will Foundation on mental health:

• 1 in 4 Australians aged 16 to 24 years of age has a mental disorder;
• Suicide is the leading cause of death for males and females aged between 15 and 44;
• One person dies of suicide every four hours in Australia;
• The World Health Organisation predicts that by 2030 depression will be the leading health burden globally to mankind;
• Among the young people with the most severe mental health problems only 50 percent receive professional help and it is worse in regional areas.

• WHEN: 6:30pm – 8.30 pm, Monday, November 28, 2016.
• WHERE: Scone High School Multi-Purpose Centre, Gundy Road, Scone.
• COST: Free.

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