ROD Quantock brought a hilarious and occasionally revolutionary tone to a mental health education seminar held in Torquay North last week.<\/p>\n
The comedian and writer was the keynote speaker at the Connected Communities event \u2013 part of the Art of the Minds Festival \u2013 which featured stories from people with lived experiences with mental illness and carers, researcher updates, workshops, stalls from service providers, and musical entertainment.<\/p>\n
Mr Quantock spoke about how Australia was no longer an inclusive society and how that was having consequences, particularly to those working in the mental health system.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not here to encourage a revolution, but you spend all your time in the sector struggling. Is there anyone here who thinks they\u2019re getting enough money? Of course not!<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to make the politicians accept that we have a crisis in this country.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs Australians, we have become cruel, and hard, and vindictive, and people are suffering because of that.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an increasingly inequitable society, and a lot of the problems have everything to do with that inequality.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s getting to the point where the system will break; it\u2019s all getting too hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps contradicting his earlier comment, Mr Quantock then said \u201cI\u2019m sorry to have to put this burden on you, but you\u2019ve got to overthrow the system\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake every Friday afternoon off, get together in the tearoom, and plot your revolution.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got to get people to understand the human cost and the human side of this, and the wonderful, wonderful people \u2013 and I\u2019ve met hundreds of people with mental illness \u2013 who through no fault of their own find themselves pretty much in a ditch.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chief executive officer of genU Mike McKinstry congratulated the Art of the Minds team for organising the seminar.<\/p>\n
\u201cMental health has been one of those things that\u2019s sort of been in the background for many, many years, and to some extent, events like this and the support of the community and organisations and people like yourself is trying to bring that into the foreground.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
ROD Quantock brought a hilarious and occasionally revolutionary tone to a mental health education seminar held in Torquay North last week. The comedian and writer was the keynote speaker at the Connected Communities event \u2013 part of the Art of the Minds Festival \u2013 which featured stories from people with lived experiences with mental illness […]<\/p>\n