Hi Triple Zero supporters,
It's World Mental Health Day this Saturday 10 October.
Do you see what I see?
It could mean you're thinking about the everyday humdrum of mental health or, like me, acknowledging the reality of mental illness and long roads of recovery and healing from complex trauma.
As a long time mental health living experience advocate, the day honestly isn't much more than a tool for mental health organisations to sell their products and build their databases.
A bit like Christmas for Coles.
If we really want to do something useful and meaningful this World Mental Health Day, as well as signing up for a virtual climb of Mt Everest, intellectually challenge the daily practices of the mental health system in our suburbs.
Do we want police to be the first responders the first time a desperate parent calls 000?
Or do we want a dedicated, calm and humane approach, with skilled mental health and lived experience professionals, trained in the art of de-escalation of post trauma stress, psychosis and suicidal thinking?
How to help:
- Phone or email your preferred local MP. Tell them you don't want police as First Responders to mental health crises in your area any more. Ask them to help you raise this issue in their places of parliamentary power.
- Share this petition on your socials. If the 35,000 of us, each got just one more signature, we'd be the size of Bundaberg (Taribelang Bunda).
- Write to your favourite major newspaper. Write an Opinion Piece, a Letter to the Editor, an article for a student paper, community press. Make a blip on the radar of silence. Think about snowflakes - on their own they're fragile but when they stick together!
- Read up on PACER - Police, Ambulance, Clinician Emergency Response. (PACER) is a Police lead program with mental health as 'secondary support'. No excuse.
Thanks,
Heidi