IMHpact is a group of agencies coming together to work under a philosophy of
truly patient centered care, so to improve the journey of mental health
consumers their outcomes and their well-being.
IMHpact annual forums year-on-year have grown and I think really they always reflect where the
sector is at. I think the essence of this year's forum is that it's around the
individuals who are most important which is those who are accessing mental health
services in our community and they're strongly represented here today both
consumers and carers and the organizations that work together to support them.
Most people don't talk about the difficulties of the mental
illness per se they talk about of the impact that services have on their lives
for good or or for bad, what we don't spend a lot of time on is listening to
the stories of people that have really found services useful
and learning from that and then multiplying that out in and how we kind
of replicate that, we're very good at listening to what's not working but not
so much at what is working in people's lives.
So I've lived with mental illness now for five years and it's only been the
last 12 months that I've been able to come out and actually say that I've got
mental illness and actually talk at a forum like the forum of today and it's
very important because it's a key ingredient in terms of me feeling
empowered so I can head towards wellness. Empowerment is a key concept because if
you don't feel in control or empowered with managing your illness and managing
the treatment of it then it's hard for you to be in that position.
I think my recovery has started to take place when I've taken more control of
aspects of my life and we've also combined that with an excellent
medication. We'd had some trials of medications that didn't hold the
depression so I've got a good medication mix but also I made some very big
changes in my life and also have embraced diet and exercise.
I wanted to capture the very essence of the work that we do at Galambila,
Last thing I wanted to do was talk shop so I wanted to capture something that we
do around a social emotional well-being program and that was the healing circle.
The circles a place where we can all come together and connect in the truth of who
we are as individuals, it provides an opportunity to create a collective story
so the circle that I run on a Tuesday is ran through the sis program which is
ideally is about engaging people that have been a little bit isolated a little
bit disconnected, fitting them back into the community in a proactive way.
I've lost some very dear people in me life and the circle helped me find myself again and
pull myself out of a dark hole and I haven't look back really and I'm still going.
That circle itself for for us and for the participants was a really you know a
major turning point. For them to go and show a bunch of people that they don't
know how much they've grown was probably one of the most beautiful things that I
have witnessed it was true empowerment and that's basically what circle is it's
about this opportunity to understand who we are, you know that's really generated
through acceptance and non judgement and that's what circle does.
Services are really really important in people's lives and yet they're not the
central piece and the services can play a pivotal role in helping people's
recovery is to support them to stretch into that real citizenship not to keep
them closeted and safe and and and within a service but to provide
opportunities for people to have a go, to take a risk, to step outside the comfort
zone, to experience themselves as their full citizenship not as a service
citizen as a service recipient. If services are able to do that then
services have done their job well.