Mental health champion will be at Colac Otway’s Australia Day event

THE Colac Otway Shire’s Australia Day ambassador for this year has dedicated her career to expanding community understanding of mental health and developing programs that better support people with mental health conditions.

Betty Kitchener was chief executive officer of the charity Mental Health First Aid Australia and established the world’s first mental health first aid program, a training course that provides initial help for people developing illness or experiencing a mental health crisis.

Ms Kitchener’s Mental Health First Aid program now helps people in more than 25 countries around the world.

Shire mayor Jason Schram said Ms Kitchener’s own experience with depression motivated her to expand community understanding and develop programs that better supported people with mental health conditions.

“Ms Kitchener felt there was a lack of support when she herself was experiencing depression, which was the motivation for her to create awareness in our community that mental illness is an illness, just like any other illness.

“By having mental health first aiders in workplaces, just as you have staff with first aid qualifications, Ms Kitchener has created a program for people to support their colleagues and provide initial help to a person who may be developing mental illness.

“Staff at Colac Otway Shire have completed the mental health first aid program and we can speak with first-hand knowledge of the value of the program.

“The program has revolutionised the ways in which mental health problems are responded to and treated within the community.

“Colac Otway Shire is honoured to host Ms Kitchener as our Australia Day Ambassador and thanks her for her outstanding work in shaping international mental health care.”

Early in her career, Ms Kitchener trained as a teacher and worked in special education, later she studied and worked in psychology, counselling and nursing. The author of many first aid manuals on mental health, Ms Kitchener is also an adjunct Professor at Deakin University.

Colac Otway’s official Australia Day event on the foreshore at Apollo Bay starts at 11am, with community award presentations and citizenship ceremony from 11.30am.

For more information on Mental Health First Aid Australia, head to mhfa.com.au.