CEO Update: Why Meaningful Connections Matter this World Mental Health Day
World Mental Health Day on 10 October is a time to put mental health in the spotlight, raise awareness and break down stigma.
This year for Mental Health Australia’s World Mental Health Day campaign we have focussed on why meaningful connections matter, and why they are so important for good mental health.
At the heart of our campaign are the voices of those with lived and living experience of mental ill-health.
12 advocates from across the country have shared their experiences of how meaningful connections have shaped their mental health journey and supported them on the road to good mental health.
From Outback Queensland to Australia’s capital, these stories show us that regardless of income or postcode, mental health is an issue that touches each and every one of us in different ways.
World Mental Health Day reminds us that we should be connecting with loved ones, connecting with our community, our colleagues, connecting to Country, connecting with services and supports if needed - and most importantly - connecting back with ourselves for good mental health.
This is the message we shared with our policymakers at Mental Health Australia’s Mental Health Sector Expo at Parliament House yesterday.
Co-hosted in partnership with the Parliamentary Friends of Youth Mental Health and the Parliamentary Friends of Mental Health, we were delighted to welcome the Hon Mark Butler MP, Minister for Health and Aged Care, to speak with over 120 mental health professionals and attendees from 45 of our member organisations.
Mr Butler said, "The consumer voice, the carer voice, are incredibly important in making sure we get the design and the implementation of mental health programs – perhaps more than any other area of health – right."
"I want to thank all of you for the work that you do. These are really tough times. We’ve gone through an incredibly traumatic period with the pandemic that really impacted people’s mental health, impacted young people’s and children’s mental health, in some ways in a way that we hadn’t seen before, with the impact particularly of lockdowns, and that’s been followed by other crises... You have the best ideas of how we can do better to support people in mental distress, whether that’s relatively temporary mental distress or whether it’s lifelong relatively severe mental illness. I just want to thank you again for coming out this morning. I want to thank you for putting together this terrific expo."
In one of the last federal parliamentary sitting weeks of 2024, our members were able to showcase the incredibly important work of their organisations to parliamentarians, feature sector achievements, and promote the availability of mental health supports and services in local electorates.
By building these meaningful connections in a bipartisan way, mental health sector professionals, policymakers and people with lived and living experience of mental ill-health, along with their family, carers and supporters, can all work together to continue building a mental health system that supports the needs of all people in Australia.
Carolyn Nikoloski
CEO, Mental Health Australia | 
