BLIGH Park resident Simon Griffin is on a mission to overhaul the local mental health system to make it easier for people like him to access help and ongoing care.
He also wants to raise more awareness about mental health in the area, for the benefit of everyone from children to adults.
He proposed a mental health hub that pulls together mental health resources available to locals in the area.
His ambitious plan has been set-out in a survey, which he plans to make available in local chemists in due course. It is already available at the Secret Garden at WSU Hawkesbury Campus.
Mr Griffin is 27 years old and was born and bred in the Hawkesbury. He attended local schools, where he said he was the victim of bullying and harassment.
He later tried to take his own life, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia and generalised anxiety - afflictions that make it difficult for him to work.
“It’s been hard with just about anything I do - going out and having fun and social events,” he told the Gazette.
Mr Griffin has been a mental health consumer for a number of years now. He sees a local psychologist and psychiatrist, and is signed-up with various mental health services - both community-based (nonprofit) and government-funded - including Partners in Recovery, and Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW.
He wants to make it easier for locals to access community services, by forming a Hawkesbury Mental Health Hub - a network of non-government organisations (NGO) joining together to offer free care, counselling, and group activities.
“I’m trying to pull all these resources together and get them to collaborate with the community and say ‘this is where we need to go’,” said Mr Griffin.
“Through trying to gain support, I am hoping that anyone who presents based on his or her personal struggles with mental illness, despite ‘not looking sick’, will be granted access.
“More often than not, those who struggle are told they are ‘over reacting’ or to ‘grow up’, amongst other things, due to not being classed as acute enough to warrant a place within the public mental health system.”
He said private hospitals like St John of God were cost-prohibitive for many locals.
Mr Griffin’s petition - called ‘Inadequate Provisions for mental health in the Hawkesbury Area and Beyond’ - was introduced at a recent Council meeting, with a notice of motion to increase Council’s involvement in Mental Health Month in 2017.
He is hoping to gather 10,000 signatures so he can take his suggestions to the State Government.
He is also hoping the petition helps raise awareness of mental health in the Hawkesbury, across all age groups.
“I don’t want anything to happen to my kids let alone anyone else's kids,” he said.