Hello everyone. I found out about this group after watching the 4 corners documentary. It encouraged me to write about it in my blog and one of my newspaper editorials. I would like you to tell me what you think about my piece below. Thanks :) A few weeks ago I said some nasty comments on Facebook and as usual I social martyred myself in the process. What the audience didn’t know was they were participating in a social experiment. It confirmed my theory that people are more likely to respond to negativity but more importantly, people don’t stop to think about why a person is saying something. We all express ourselves differently and sometimes it’s a sign of reaching out for help. How you respond can be the difference between their life and death. This week was Mental Health week. I was fortunate enough to participate in this national conversation by kicking it off as an audience member at #QandA. It’s been a great learning experience, listening to other people’s stories, some unfortunately with devastating outcomes. There is always room for improvement in services that help identify and treat problems, but when it comes to mental health, the biggest failure is the lack of support in the recovery phase, especially when they are Youth. Imagine being a 15 year old girl and you’ve just been admitted into an outreach centre for 10 days because you’re at risk of self-harm. Apart from having to deal with the isolation and prison like environment, the treatment would be like living the nightmare for 10 days. What happens when she returns to school? Do you think her peers are going to be nice? The bullying starts and before you know it, she has committed suicide. The laws around supressing suicide incidents have to change. Whilst I can understand there’s a fear relating to copycat incidents, the fact is you can’t supress this issue. People are talking about it right now using their mobile devices. As an onlooker, I observe these conversations and I am happy to see people try to help but we have to also take this conversation offline using verbal words not written text. The entire community needs to find out suicide is epidemic and it’s preventable. The solution here lays with the community and empowering them as the troops on the ground. Helping someone with a mental health problem should be like doing first aid on an ankle injury but the ultimate solution here is finding out what caused the problem. Whoever you are, don’t be scared to reach out to someone who is suffering. Do ordinary things with extraordinary love. We all can make a difference.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 07:41:02 +0000
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