42 AusTRAlIAN QuARTeRlY OCT–DEC 2017
AQ | Q&A – STuDEnT EDITIOnEarly interventions
in communities to
equip them with the
skills they need to
support their own,
and others’, mental
health is a powerful,
cost effective, and
neglected solution.
This year you gave a wonderful
TEDx talk on mental health; what
was the message?
Too often we see mental illness as
a character weakness, and something
an individual needs to solve alone.
But recovery and management of any
illness is made so much easier with a
community of support, where there
can be openness and no shame or
stigma associated. Mental illness is an
epidemic.
Early interventions in communities to
equip them with the skills they need to
support their own, and others’, mental
health is a powerful, cost effective, and
neglected solution. We need to equip
people with a better understanding of
how we can look after our brains, but
also what can go wrong, through no
personal fault.
We need to be able to express
our experiences, to be vulnerable, to
support, to know how to stay and
listen when it gets uncomfortable, and
where to turn for further help. We need
people to know they are not alone in
their experiences, and that it is worthfighting, as there is genuine cause for
hope.
Building that open community of
discussion is what It Gets Brighter is
trying to achieve.
Does an academic understanding
of mental illness help with the
reality of it?
one of the many reasons that I
wanted to study neuroscience was
indeed to better understand what
goes wrong in mental illness. I always
struggled to have language to express
what was happening, and to explain
it to myself. or indeed to explain why
certain treatments worked, and what all
of these experiences, and my response
to them, meant about who I was.
Having an academic understanding
of the brain and mental illness
has provided me with a toolkit of
language and concepts to be able to
explain some of these experiences.
understanding and awareness comes
with realising there is no one at ‘fault’
(and indeed who ‘we’ are is always
changing).
Having an academic understanding
doesn’t mean you can necessarily cure
anything in yourself, but it provides
a framework to understand how we
construct reality, and what can go
wrong in that process.
has studying the brain given
you any insights into how we as
a society can better deal with
mental illness?
Having experienced mental illness
when I was younger I realised how little
control we sometimes have over our
behaviour, and how scary it can be.
As horrible as it was, it also made meemma laWRance On tedx
https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=0K1SScKbn48