Support & Mentor Limited Announces Deb Carr as Patron

I am honoured to be made Patron of www.support.org.au I have personal experience with losing a family member to suicide read more.

SUPPORT & MENTOR LIMITED (SUPPORT) is a community organisation that provides mental health services and individual support to people in the Sydney metropolitan area. The SUPPORT concept was established in 2000. The main purpose of SUPPORT is to help people reduce mental illness and prevent suicide. SUPPORT works in collaboration with local community partners including community, government and commerce and interface with traditional psychiatric and psychological therapies to deliver services in five key mental health domains:

-Mentoring

-Physical well-being

-Social justice

-Trauma solutions

-Stress reduction

In Australia Mental Illness directly affects nearly one in two people and each week almost fifty Australians die from suicide. Rates of mental illness are increasing, in particular the rate of severe and persistent mental illness.

People with Severe and Persistent mental illness represent a critical group as they are the group of people with mental illness who are greatest at risk of suicide or self harm and whom require the greatest amount of therapeutic and care resources. People with severe and persistent mental illness have poorer physical health than the general population often experiencing chronic conditions, obesity, smoking, alcohol and drug use.

An ever growing number of people with severe and persistent mental illness are either falling through the cracks in the mental health system or are already dealing with inadequacies of the mental health system. Through repeated failures in the clinical setting, over reliance on the medical model and the failure of the mental health system to respond to need, people have lost faith in the mental health system. Once a person has had a poor experience with the mental health system, it takes a tremendous proactive effort to reorient that person toward recovery.

SUPPORT is a service that is in direct response to the growing number of people that are falling through the cracks in the mental health system. The SUPPORT goal is to help people improve their own quality of life and life expectancy through self-determination. The SUPPORT team consists of people who have mental illness themselves, they are qualified and experienced to provide the services. SUPPORT provides opportunities for people to get their life back, move toward happiness and be their personal best.

SUPPORT are currently expanding the program. There are current opportunities for people to participate. For additional information call Stephen Howald on 02 9144 1447 or 0422 9144 20.

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