General News
20 July, 2022
Mental health pilot to launch
TERANG will be the first south west town to pilot a new initiative aiming to help break the stigma of mental illness through community-led discussions.
TERANG will be the first south west town to pilot a new initiative aiming to help break the stigma of mental illness through community-led discussions.
The Let’s Talk Foundation, with the support of more than a dozen passionate volunteers from across Terang and surrounding areas including Terang, Mortlake, Garvoc and Panmure, will host a range of discussions with local businesses, community groups, schools and sporting clubs from next month.
Let’s Talk co-founder Mick Fitzgibbon said the purpose was to increase community engagement and support to break the cycle of silence, showing people they are not alone in their battle with mental health or their efforts to heal.
“We’re trying to educate the community to talk to each other,” he said.
“If everybody feels they can talk to the rest of the community with confidence, that they will be respected and everybody will look after them, then we can encourage the next lot of sufferers to come out and talk and we will have done a great thing.”
Among the volunteers will be presenters, who can provide educational information regarding the signs of mental illness and how to help.
There will also be those willing to share their lived experience, including sufferers of mental illness and those who have lost loved ones to suicide.
“It’s a culture change, and a change in the way we help people,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
The topic is close to his heart after he and wife, Jane, helped to co-found Let’s Talk following the death of their son.
“We lost our own son. I lost my sister, and I lost a friend before that. I have lost a heap of people in the community and when you have that many people leave you in life, you become very sad and helpless,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
“When we went right in to it as an organisation to try and break the stigma, to focus on removing the stigma and educating the community."
“So you and I can talk to each other, to know I have respect for you as a human, and know that I want you to tell me if you’re unwell and in doing that I can help relieve you from your burden."
“If we care for each other better, we’ll all be much happier.”
He said the tide was turning on a previous era when mental health struggles were taboo.
“We have a problem in our society where people hide their mental health because they haven’t trusted the rest of the community with that information, and over history people who have struggled with mental health have been put down by the rest of the community,” Mr Fitzgibbon said.
“It was a dumb thing to do, showing we didn’t understand what people were going through, so we put them down and walked away – but the truth is that it was wrong and stops people coming out."
“Eventually, people decide they don’t want to be here.”
Corangamite Shire councillor Jo Beard has thrown her support behind the initiative.
“It’s really empowering, and it’s something I have strived for over a few years since I was mayor,” she said.
“Seeing a town take its own action is empowering, and it’s one of those things were if we don’t help ourselves then who is going to help us?"
“If one person comes out of it feeling empowered or prepared to share their own story to help someone who has been struggling, it is all worth it."
“But it does take a whole community approach, changing a culture, making people feel safe to live in a community where it is okay to not be okay and where we can help each other.”
Cr Beard said she had first met Mr and Mrs Fitzgibbon six years ago when she was Corangamite Shire mayor, during a meeting with powerful results.
“Within that meeting, sitting with them and hearing their own story, empowered me to share my own personal story,” she said.
“I’d lived over three decades with my issues and never spoke a word about it, and then to all of a sudden to be opening up to complete strangers was overwhelming."
“But they made it feel like it was a safe space which resonated with me, and I hope this message resonates with the community in the same way and will enable them to have a move balanced and happy life, just likeme now.”
Cr Beard said she hoped to see more towns across the shire embrace the concept of opening up about mental health.
“We’ve had pockets of the community, whether that be through sporting clubs or businesses which have taken on the Let’s Talk message, but to actually have a whole-of-community back it is significant,” she said.
“Then it becomes a way of life, and the whole culture changes rather than having issues in isolation."
“That’s the exciting part about Terang doing this, and hopefully other communities see the benefit in that and this can happen in other towns across Corangamite Shire.”
More details will follow in upcoming publications.
