These words, spoken by so many consumers and carers that have helped shape the new national multicultural mental health project – Embrace Multicultural Mental Health – are the essence of today’s launch, and the future of this project and a concerted effort to provide mental health services and information that is culturally appropriate.
Let’s embrace this challenge and in partnership with the Federation of Ethnic Communities’ Council of Australia (FECCA) and the National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA), Mental Health Australia is extremely proud to launch Embrace Multicultural Mental Health including its new website and Framework at www.embracementalhealth.org.au
Embrace Multicultural Mental Health builds on the important work of previous national multicultural mental health projects by providing a national platform for Australian mental health services and multicultural communities to access resources, services and information in a culturally accessible format.
At an organisational level, I’d particularly like to thank Kylie Wake, Ruth Das, Kaitlin Saunders, Charlene Singh and Anna Siddall for their work in re-shaping the project and breathing new life into an area of such importance.
As you’ll hear from three of our consumers and carer representatives in this video below, mental health in our culturally and linguistically diverse community cannot be a one size fits all solution.
Since first coming together to contribute to this project nearly twelve months ago, the input from consumers and carers has helped inform new materials and resources for organisations who provide services to multicultural Australians, and helped us all to understand how important it is to embrace multicultural mental health.
This video is just a snapshot of the stories and advice to promote help seeking and improve services for multicultural mental health in Australia. These powerful stories are only just the start.
You can also follow the Embrace Multicultural Mental Health Project on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using @EmbraceMultiMH.
Warm regards,
Frank Quinlan
Chief Executive Officer
Mental Health Australia