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The Hamilton Centre Podcast | Exploring Mental Health & Addiction is for service providers, individuals and family members dealing with co-occurring mental health and substance use conditions. In response to the recommendation of the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System (2021), the Centre was established to create a more inclusive and supportive system by promoting integrated care in Victoria, Australia.
Our podcast will feature interviews with service providers, individuals with lived experience, and workers who assist people with co-occurring conditions. We aim to promote holistic care throughout Victoria by breaking down barriers to treatment and through open minds and open doors.
This series features Gemma Turvey's composition, "Turquoise," performed by Gemma on piano, Craig Beard on vibraphone, and the talented musicians of the New Palm Court Orchestra.
Welcome to the Hamilton Centre podcast, a space where we explore the thinking of leaders, service providers, workers, and people with living and lived experience shaping the landscape of integrated care in mental health and addiction services in Victoria. I'm Annie Williams, Hamilton Centre relationship and partnership lead, and your host today. The Hamilton Centre acknowledges with deep respect all First Nations people and traditional owner groups within Victoria. We extend that respect to the traditional owners of the land on which this episode is recorded, the Wurundjeri-Woi wurrung people of the Kulin nation, and pay our respects to elders past and present, and acknowledge their unceded connection to land, sea and sky. Hamilton Centre recognises people with lived and living experience of mental ill health, alcohol and other drug issues, and of recovery, and the experience of people who have been the carers, families or supporters of people with co occurring issues as their experiences help us shape services that are safe, accessible and inclusive.
Annie:In today's episode, I'm excited to welcome Associate Professor Brendan O'Hanlon, mental health program manager at the Bouverie Centre, and Robert Campbell, program manager at Family Drug and Gambling Help from Sharc. We will discuss the essential role that families and caregivers play in supporting their loved ones who are facing mental illness and addiction challenges. We will explore topics such as stigma, available support, and ways to improve services for these individuals. Associate Professor Brendan O'Hanlon is a senior fellow and head of practice and service development at the Bouverie Centre, La Trobe University, where he leads the centre's role in building the capability of mental health and other human services to constructively include families in care. He has worked as a clinician in mental health services and as a family therapist at the Bouverie Centre, specialising in working with families where a member experienced a serious mental health condition.
Annie:Brendan has led several large scale implementation projects focusing on family inclusion with services in Australia and overseas and has been nationally recognized for his contribution to mental health services. Robert Campbell is the program manager at Family Drug and Gambling Help, a program of self help addiction resource centre, SHARC, and has been working in the human services field for over twenty five years across a number of fields, which include alcohol and other drugs, gambling, men's behaviour change and family violence, couple and family work, community health, acquired brain injury, and acute and ambulatory services. He's also been involved in research projects with Beyond Blue, Deakin University, ARBIAS, and Monash University. Rob is also a board trustee at AFINet, the Addiction and Family International Network, which promotes through research, practice, and policy the well-being of family members, friends, and colleagues who are affected by and or concerned about another person's problems with addiction to alcohol, drugs, or gambling. Thank you both for being here today.
A/Prof Brendan:Thank you. Thank you.
Annie:In our previous episodes, we've talked about the support and services available for people experiencing mental ill health and addiction issues, as well as the resources available for clinicians working with them. Today, however, we're turning our focus and attention to the family members of these individuals. Whilst it's important to acknowledge that support services for families may still be somewhat limited, thankfully, there's a growing recognition of the real challenges and the emotional and physical toll that families face when a loved one struggles with mental ill health or substance use issues. And this increased awareness can likely be credited to the advocacy, research, and focus of your services. So if I start with you, Brendan, could you briefly share a bit about your work with the Bouverie Centre and what services the Bovary Centre has provided?
A/Prof Brendan:So, Bouverie is part of La Trobe University, and it's described as a research practice and translation centre, which means that we provide clinical services to families with a prioritization of those families where a member has a a serious mental illness or, an addiction issue. We, have an academic program where we train people in, family therapy, to a master's level. We're also involved in the building of capability of mental health services and in a range of other human services in their ability to actually work with, families, to include families in what they do. And most of our customers are those services that tend to focus on working with individuals. And we also have a really rapidly developing research capacity.
A/Prof Brendan:And in a formal sense, we're a research centre within La Trobe University. So, I guess, we have numbers of touch points, if you like, in relation to the issue of of families, you know, really experiencing a range of difficulties and adversities. And, my experience includes working directly with families, and of more recent times, really a focus on, working with services to include families in the everyday care that they provide.
Annie:And so that research that you're doing would inform that capability building?
A/Prof Brendan:Absolutely. Our clinical work is is now quite heavily researched, and that then informs the training that we offer to the services. Our research also extends to our translation work. So, this is a relatively new and and exciting development for the centre, and I think, we're very pleased that we have these different arms of activity, and and influence.
Annie:Yes. Yes. Of course. And Rob, could you share a bit about your service and
Rob:Sure. So Family Drug and Gambling Help, we've been around since 2000, and it's a family service that's very much there supporting families, friends and loved ones who are impacted by someone's addiction in the family. And what characterizes the service at Sharc is that it's very much a peer based model providing peer support. So people with their own lived experience being able to provide that sense of connection and understanding based on their own experience. So we have a strong component of volunteers in our service who, staff our helpline, which is a twenty four hour service, and also support groups as well.
Rob:So we provide education, which is really important for families to get strategies on how to approach certain situations. But also the recognition of families, getting their own support for themselves because I think that families lose sight of the fact that they have needs too. And that's a critical part of of what we help to support families with.
Rob:And we also have an aspect around approaching gambling too in terms of recognizing the interplay with gambling and AOD, mental health, of course, and that's an area that we increasingly recognize is very important to address too.
Annie:Fantastic. Can I ask you both, when did this notion that supporting and involving families could actually improve outcomes for both the family and the individual, when when did this start?
A/Prof Brendan:I could probably speak most confidently about the history of that in in mental health. And, probably in the late sixties, early seventies, there's certainly a recognition well, there's an unfortunate history, particularly within family therapy, and more generally of family blaming. So understanding mental illness, particularly conditions like schizophrenia as the product of essentially family dysfunction. And, I think a lot of the early efforts around including the family were really designed to see if they could cure schizophrenia.
A/Prof Brendan:They weren't particularly interested in the family as people who had needs in their own right, but really a means to an end in terms of the identified patient's recovery from the condition. But I think with the development of more sort of family psychoeducational programs dating back probably to the early seventies, there was a kind of recognition that families could play a role in the course of the condition, no longer thinking that they were could be the sort of source of fixing it, but actually, perhaps helping to prevent relapse and readmission. And then gradually that work was subject to pretty extensive research, and really now you'll see that in most guidelines for the treatment of serious mental illness there will be a recommended component of family inclusion and sometimes quite specific requirements in terms of providing psychoeducation, skills training in knowing how to kind of best respond to mental illness in a family member. I think the other thing that has happened over time is what's been alluded to already, which is the notion that families then have needs in their own right.
A/Prof Brendan:And a lot of that came from the carer movement within mental health. In Europe and the US, but also notably in Australia, where families were, again, preoccupied initially with how could they get better outcomes
Annie:Yes.
A/Prof Brendan:For their relative rather than thinking about better outcomes for themselves. But over time I think there's been a increasing recognition reflected in legislation and other means of and and certainly in policy directions that, yeah, services need to be actually they owe something to families in terms of their role. But the evidence is some people would describe the evidence for family interventions in mental health as probably one of the most robust evidence basis of psychosocial interventions. Now that's great.
A/Prof Brendan:The reality is that what's recommended and what happens are
Annie:because it remains a heavily stigmatized
A/Prof Brendan:Stigmatized and simply not not used or implemented part of mental health care, unfortunately.
Annie:Does this apply to the AOD and gambling field, Rob?
Rob:In in many ways, I think that, and and you see this reflected in the funding for AOD services is that the far majority of funding goes towards the treatment of the individual seeking support for themselves, and that's not reflected at all in the needs for families. And although there's increasing recognition of the role and the support needs of families, it's not reflected in the funding that they need. And so even our service, which began in 2000, was very much a grassroots response to the huge number of people who were tragically overdosing and dying during the heroin peak in the late middle to late nineties. And and we saw their families that were wanting to provide support for themselves.
Rob:So it wasn't something that was a government initiative. It was actually a grassroots thing, and that how sort of it became involved and connected with Sharc, which is very much around that peer based model. And from there, we see that that families have incredible agency, but they're also very frustrated by feeling that they're being blocked out of the treatment model. Not that they want to be controlling or involved in the sense of overtaking what's happening, but rather to be included in being able to have input, but also to recognize that they have their needs too.
Rob:And I think that we're becoming much more aware of that and the importance that they can make both in terms of their own recovery journey, but when they're getting supported, we know that that has a positive impact on the person whom they're concerned about too, in the family. So I think that when I first came into the AOD sector in the mid nineties, I was really struck by how families were seen as this this problem, this thing to be blocked away. Now we've gotta focus on the person in treatment. And in all the different roles that I've had, I've just been really struck by how families want to be included in a constructive way, and that when they're well supported themselves, they have such a better different experience both with services themselves and within the family dynamics as well.
Annie:So I'll take you back to the statement you made, Rob, about families having a strong agency. What are the barriers to families seeking support for themselves when they have a loved one with alcohol and other drug issues or gambling issues?
Rob:I think there are a number of answers to that. One, obviously, is the shame and stigma associated with addiction in the community. So I think that the media and its portrayal of addiction often has a very negative presentation. And also the sense of hopelessness and lack of supports available, or seeming lack of supports available. Also, I think the profile and availability of services which families can reach out to is quite quite limited.
Rob:So a common thing that we hear from families is if only I'd known about your service five years or ten years ago, that would have made such a difference. But they just didn't know we exist. And I think it's one of those things you don't often see something until you're looking for it. Or there's a situation where you need to go to that particular place.
Rob:So I think a lot of the barriers are that families don't, from a service point of view have thought included, or because there isn't that awareness of services being available. But once families do connect with good supports, then there is that incredible sense of agency
Rob:Which then can help to provide support to other families so that there isn't that sense of isolation. And there's that more sense that things can be done both in terms of advocacy around systems change, but also around providing support mutual support for families.
Annie:And is there a sense in the families when if we're talking about AOD issues or mental health that this is a deeply personal matter. This is a family matter, and they would like to keep it in house or perhaps they're from a culturally and linguistically diverse background. And so looking for support may actually stigmatize them further.
Rob:Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
A/Prof Brendan:I think there's a distinction too between seeking out support for themselves and being included in the care that's being provided to their relative. And I think there are clearly lots of barriers to families being included in care, which can range from the person, the the relative themselves not wanting their family to be involved, feeling like this might be controlling or that they may be cast in a bad light. A lot of or or in fact, there may be real issues where they've there's been abuse. So there are issues at that level. I think there are issues for family members being involved, which touch on some of what we're talking about in terms of how will we be viewed by services.
A/Prof Brendan:You know, will they judge us as as having failed or being inadequate or even being viewed as destructive? So I think there's a lot that's operating there. And of course, that issue of sort of opening up their lives to professionals, being subject to that judgment. I think practitioners also bring a set of ideas and practices. Most practitioners are more comfortable working with an individual and sometimes find the dance between, you know, staying aligned with their client and reaching out to families as difficult.
A/Prof Brendan:I think that probably reflects a very individualistic culture, and in some cultures, family inclusion is is the norm, not the exception.
Annie:Correct.
A/Prof Brendan:And so it it's our particular challenge with that. And then I think you have service systems that are very individually oriented, so they don't even know what to do with how to record family contact. You know, there are legislative things like provisions around confidentiality, which are often perhaps interpreted very rigidly, when there may be ample scope to share information that's not contentious with families. Sometimes practitioners, may kind of perhaps use the idea of confidentiality as a reason for not including families. And, yeah, we have service systems that measur the number of clients saying they don't even necessarily even record the extent of family contact or, see that as a key performance in the apology.
A/Prof Brendan:We would, certainly, from our perspective at Bouverie, would like to see that as a, you know, a performance, measure for services. But they're so individually oriented that those things seem secondary or really not valued that highly at all, but by the commissioning services
Annie:Which resonates to your point about funding and policy change
Rob:Yep. Yep.
Annie:How does having a family member with mental ill health or alcohol and other drug issues affect the physical and emotion emotional wellbeing of the family?
A/Prof Brendan:Well, certainly in the mental health sphere we know that family members of, you know, caring for a person with a serious mental illness have twice the rates of depression and anxiety as the general community. So it and and you see a whole lot of other associated impacts, including things like social isolation.
Annie:Yes. Yes.
A/Prof Brendan:And, these are even things like accessing GP services, that there's higher rates of utilization of those services because we're actually dealing with people who are pretty distressed and often very overwhelmed and feel like they're kinda doing it on their own. So these are well documented impacts. They're not just a sort of intuition or a suspicion. They're well established phenomena for those people who are in a direct caring role, but also for other family members who might be affected, who are not in a sort of actively, care role, but might be, for instance, distressed by the traumatic circumstances around an admission or by the bizarre behavior of their relative.
Annie:Yeah. It's interesting. Sorry, Rob. I was just gonna say when I was preparing for this podcast, I was reading about the well documented issue of increased risk of stroke and hypertension in family members who are caring for someone with alcohol and drug and mental health issues.
Rob:And just following on from what Brendan was saying too, I think one of the paradoxes or issues that families have in especially in the AOD space is that they have their own addiction issues at times as their way of coping.
Annie:Yes.
Rob:So they fixate on their loved one's heroin use, you say, but don't think twice about drinking a bottle of wine to cope with the stress because this is what you do for self soothe. Yeah. So you have these parallel processes of addiction which aren't necessarily seen. So I think the value of being able to understand that and looking at alternative ways of coping is really valuable for families because they don't even think that their use of Valium is a problem, for example. So you have all of those sorts of issues around even smoking and which obviously impact on health.
Rob:And the other thing too is the issue of what Brendan was touching on, other family members who may not be directly in the household but are profoundly affected. And we especially see this with siblings, grandparents as well, who are very much seeing the shattered impact on the family and feeling very helpless, and yet feeling like they're having to pick up the pieces, which has a direct impact on their retirement plans, because they're having to feel that they're in a space where they need to very much step in. And again, that isn't necessarily helpful and providing support as to how to understand ways of having boundaries and and appropriate ways of being able to connect, provide support, but also look after themselves.
Annie:Because that area can generate a lot of financial stress
Rob:Yep. Absolutely.
Annie:To the family and the broader family.
Rob:And a lot of, you know, a lot of anger, even though there's a lot of love, there's also a lot of really
Rob:crappy emotions, resentments that are very divisive and very painful and hurtful.
A/Prof Brendan:It's worth adding too that it sort of forms part of a cycle too, where we know, for instance, highly charged emotional environments are not good if you have many conditions, but particularly mental health conditions. So there's a well established, again, literature on the impact of critical comments, negative comments from family members towards their relative who has a mental illness, which are often born out of frustration and desperation. But we know that those environments actually make it more likely that the person with the condition will relapse. And so these are things that fortunately, if you get in there, you can actually modify and make it less likely that the person will become unwell, or need to be admitted to hospital. So there's a lot of missed opportunity, I think, there.
Annie:Yeah. Because the family are on that parallel journey, aren't they? Yep. Going through the cycles.
A/Prof Brendan:In lots of ways.
Rob:And everyone's feeling stressed. That's the thing. And everyone is strained by that stress. And they're all coping as best they can.
Rob:I think that there's inherently this sense of a judgment that a family's not coping or an individual's not coping, that's why they're using drugs. But we do the best we can in life unless we find a better way to cope with the situation. And I think that that's when we can take the judgment and the punitive approach, which often is how we approach things, if we could take that out of the equation and put in place more of a, compassionate, insightful way of providing support, everyone benefits. Everyone, it's a win win. But unfortunately, just the way things are framed and amplified by how media portrays these things just makes it so much more tricky, which then perpetuates the sense of isolation, stigma, and shame as well.
Annie:Can I ask you both, does the stigma surrounding mental health and alcohol and other drug issues affect the willingness of families to seek help?
A/Prof Brendan:Oh, undoubtedly. I think, I think people are all too aware of the sort of judgments that might be made if a family member has a mental health problem. Professionals might have a view about the origins of those conditions, but family members, the community develop their own ideas. And, I think it's often seen by families as, perhaps a failure on their part to be able to nurture their children well or that there's this is an indication of family dysfunction.
A/Prof Brendan:So I think these things and, at some level, there's a sense in which we don't really wanna square up to the idea that our relative has a serious condition. You know, that's difficult with health problems generally. It's particularly difficult with mental health problems because we don't quite know what the course of that will be. But also we know that it comes with a whole lot of, community judgment about what having a mental health problem means.
A/Prof Brendan:And the sort of stigma that's associated with having a mental health problem
A/Prof Brendan:experienced by the consumer or service unit is very much parallel by the family's experience. And there's a sort of anticipation that they will be judged by others. And it doesn't take much for a professional to heighten that sense of judgment.
Annie:It's a vigilance.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah. The the antenna are out for hearing messages that I've done the wrong thing, that I'm a bad mother, that it's because we've argued that our child has turned out this way. There's a whole lot of scripts and clinicians even those with very good intentions can sometimes be tripped up by asking a question that somehow for the family member implies a judgment that they've done the wrong thing. And so then there's a a sort of withdrawal and awareness of engaging with the service.
Annie:Completely understandable. I mean, the intersectional stigma would just be another burden for the families to deal with. Would you agree?
Rob:Yeah. And especially communities that are new to Australia, who have come from overseas. You know, we see that as very much wanting to save face or not knowing what supports are available or not wanting to know others in their very tight knit community knowing. And we see that even as a barrier for getting translation services, because they think, well, hang on, that person's from my community. How can we trust that they're not gonna know? There's my whole life story that's been translated. And so that's a huge worry for families. And we see that so much. And also to new arrivals to Australia who've invested so much to get here, and have so much expectations on their young people.
Rob:So we have parents in distress saying "my daughter, she's in year 11, but she's not focused on her studies. She's using cannabis." And you can see how that dynamic would play out where they're completely bullying their daughter to perhaps, you know, what are you doing? The shame for what their daughter is perceivably doing to the family reputation.
Annie:Yep.
Rob:Which then further pushes the daughter away.
Annie:Because education is that family ticket.
Rob:Education is the ticket to a future. So, So, you know, we see a lot of those dynamics as well within small communities.
A/Prof Brendan:It makes me think about some of the families too where the concern is that the person developing a mental illness actually reflects badly on the family to the level that it will affect the marriage prospects of other family members.
Annie:Yes.
A/Prof Brendan:And so, I remember we did, some work with services overseas where this was a really big issue. So much energy was devoted towards keeping the problem in house. And with in countries where there was a fair bit of money, people would be appointed to stay with the mentally unwell person all of the time, but it was a way of keeping them keeping the family's reputation intact so that siblings' marriage prospects wouldn't be affected.
Annie:Oh my goodness.
A/Prof Brendan:So these can be really powerful forces that are operating.
Annie:And and something that clinicians and peer workers need to be aware of.
A/Prof Brendan:And dealing with.
Rob:And I think in particular with something like gambling, which is so much more hidden in many ways as well. So there's not even an awareness that it's occurring to, so families who do become aware of that and depending on the the cultural background, where that perhaps may be more a part of the culture or not. But I think that, you know, it's important to mention gambling in this conversation as well because I think that it too is, stigmatized in its own way, but you can lose so much in literally seconds.
Rob:And and that is absolutely devastating for families.
Annie:And what do you think are the the biggest misconceptions about the alcohol and drug or gambling that contribute to this sense of stigma and isolation for the families?
Rob:I think that a lot of it has to do with an understanding of this as a moral issue, that someone's somehow weak or that they're not strong enough or they're not disciplined enough. I think that there's a lot of baggage around that with that understanding what's actually beneath that presentation. Why is someone actually using and we know that, you know, the field of addiction is a large one in area of mental health. All sorts of reasons why people are using substances, but a lot of it is without an understanding of some of the deeper drivers. And we know, obviously, trauma is a is a major one.
Rob:Social isolation, a lot of issues, obviously, economic, financial stressors as well. All sorts of issues that will be contributing to that. And, when we start to look at that more as a public health, as a way of understanding mental wellbeing, it starts to take it to a different place rather than it being a more punitive judgmental.
Annie:So remove that moral stigma
Rob:Yep.
Annie:And make it a valid validated health issue.
A/Prof Brendan:It's interesting, isn't it? I think there's probably a bit of a difference in terms of the sort of social attitudes towards mental health and addiction and gambling.
A/Prof Brendan:So one is sort of seen as a sort of moral failure.
Annie:Yes.
A/Prof Brendan:The other is seen as, maybe the product of genetics or whatever or, you know, in some ways a health condition that you're unfortunate enough to have contracted.
Annie:Unless it's a drug induced psychosis.
A/Prof Brendan:Yes. And, yeah, for those people who are wrestling with both of those issues, neither place is great because there can be a great deal of sort of fatalism about a mental health diagnosis, like a sense of permanency and, you know, an expectation perhaps of poor outcomes. There's less a sense of moral failure.
Annie:Yes.
A/Prof Brendan:But I'm not sure which is more desirable. Neither of them feel great to me either being seen as sort of damaged goods or somebody who's had this moral weakness and who's got themselves into
Annie:The double whammy.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah. It's a kind of double whammy. Whichever way you go, it's not such an easy place.
Annie:So if we think about those underlying issues that bring mental health or alcohol and other drug ill health into families, what changes can be made or are being made across sector organizations to allow for better support of these families who are caring for someone with these challenges?
A/Prof Brendan:I'm a big one for the notion of those services that are providing direct care being able to respond in their own right to families.
Annie:Yeah.
A/Prof Brendan:And it's not to say that there isn't a need for specific service for families. Absolutely, there is. But I think if those services who are actually providing care to a person with mental health or AOD or other issues create an environment where families don't feel judged, feel welcomed, included, as having a legitimate role to play rather than the awkward people out in the waiting area. Somebody there's people who can be involved and included. I think then that can also open up doorways for those families who may want or need more specific services for them for themselves.
A/Prof Brendan:And, you know, for some families, a moderate degree of inclusion in the provision of care might be enough for them. But for those who are perhaps facing more enduring or severe difficulties, having a service that's going to support them perhaps over a longer period of time, and with a focus on their wellbeing, seemed to me to form, you know, a good combination of responses, a spectrum of responses rather than we put all our resources in one doorway to support. We have a range of ways of responding to the needs of
Annie:So across agency response.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah. And within agency too. That services have the capacity to provide services directly to families even if their client is an individual, but also recognizing that there is often value in having connection with people with a similar experience. And also sometimes having support that is separate from the organization that's providing treatment because, there's an opportunity to share experiences and issues and and also to shift the focus a little bit away from the person with the condition to thinking about their own needs a bit more.
Rob:And and I think too, just adding to that, is offering that as an opportunity for families to be involved, asking the question automatically starts to legitimize they have a place too.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah.
Rob:And that they're not having to be involved either as well, that they can recognize that they can have other supports for themselves, that they're not tied to the Sunday they're not hitched to the wagon, and yet, that's when families reach out. It's often to fix the problem or where's the silver bullet to stop my 14 year old daughter from using or son from using or my husband or whatever it might be. So I think that families recognizing that they have other options of support. And I think that's the dilemma, though, I think with the service system is, in theory, you know, we talk about recognizing the interplay between mental health and and
Rob:addiction and substance use and gambling. We recognize the value of supporting families.
Rob:But how much does it really happen on the coalface? Yes. You know, when rubber hits the road. Intellectually, we know this.
Rob:But when it's an expectation built into the service system, certainly in the AOD sector, There aren't the commensurate resources in terms of time and skill base for clinicians to do that. So while they might recognize that, how much of that really is offered and pursued is another question. And I think that that's a a tension that we have in our service system. Because I think that and the other question of clinicians feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm stuck with a room with a family, what do I do? And being absolutely scared out of their brains. Because they think, oh, where's this gonna go?
Rob:And sometimes, as clinicians, that can be overthought, and sometimes it's very simple, just the actual process of connecting and engaging and recognizing that there are some other supports you don't have to fix the problem.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah. I think, you know, we were talking about this earlier about sometimes the very day to day acts of kindness that clinicians can offer to families, often at points of great distress. I don't know about you, but my experience is sometimes people at those points say things that can be incredibly comforting and, I don't know, can kinda just make things just a little bit easier or they're a direct expression of compassion. And that's particularly valuable if you think you're about to be judged.
Annie:Yes. They're validating.
A/Prof Brendan:Yeah. And it it can be, you know, we're going to look after your relative or we're gonna let you know how they got on last night or, oh, I can see, you know, your son's, you know, obviously in a difficult place, but I can see it's sort of knocked you guys around as well. It must be really hard. Like, these are not rocket science kind of ideas. These are are very doable things that I think create a culture and a climate where families don't you know, they're already coming in with their baggage.
A/Prof Brendan:And if we can do things at this point to sort of lower that sense of judgment and express kindness and compassion, yeah, we can do the whiz bang stuff. That's fine. But those things are really, particularly for frontline services, really critical to people's experience of the service system, particularly their early points of contact. Because they can sort of set things up to work well or to be kind of problematic for both parties.
Rob:And I and I think that that's further enhanced by the development of the lived and living experience workforce as well. So families who have that lived experience who can also provide that connection as well, and to validate and connect, I think. Because it's about the human connection, you know. It can all be dressed up, but ultimately, it's about being heard, being valued, feeling safe.
A/Prof Brendan:Yes.
Rob:And feeling that there is there is hope. Because there is always hope. It just doesn't necessarily we don't quite know what that looks like at times, but there is always something. Mhmm. I think that
A/Prof Brendan:Things to be better. Yeah. Yeah.
Annie:And I guess, yeah, humanizing the experience and having someone who's actually walked that path before means that you're not so alone, I guess.
Annie:Because that social isolation is crippling for so many families.
A/Prof Brendan:I think just on the service front and a sort of hopeful thing, I think the Royal Commission certainly has recognized more the role of the families and carers. And I'm loving the language that's talking about consumers and families and supporters in the one breath, in the one phrase.
A/Prof Brendan:So it's sort of saying that's our unit of attention. Now, you know, it's words, and we need to see that translated. But I think it's been a useful development and a significant investment of resource in the lived experience workforce both for consumers and for families in, certainly in mental health has been, really, really welcomed.
Rob:And that's obviously seen in the rollout of the eight mental health and more being connect centers, which are, you know, really inspiring and innovative way of responding to families, giving them a space to be getting the supports they need, but also just for them to be there for themselves and providing support, that's inclusive of mental health and AOD. So it's really important.
Annie:Brendan and Rob, I'd really like to thank you both for this conversation today. I've learned so much from both of you, and it's a very valuable area of expertise that you have. It's been great to have you on this podcast, so thank you.
Rob:Thank you, Annie.
Annie:Thank you for joining us on the Hamilton Centre podcast, where we explore the thinking of leaders, service providers, workers, and people with living and lived experience shaping the landscape of integrated care in mental health and addiction services across Victoria. I'm Annie Williams, your host today, and we can't wait to share these insights with you. Visit our website, www.hamiltoncentre.org.au, and subscribe to our newsletter for a journey into transformative mental health and addiction care.