On Wednesday, 22 students from Years 9 – 12 attended the annual “In Your Head” Mental Health Forum at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre. The students heard from a number of guest presenters throughout the day. The main speakers and many guest presenters spoke on topics of self-care, emotional regulation suicide prevention and mental health and wellbeing.

Professor Patrick McGorry – psychiatrist, spoke about his development and scaling up of early intervention and youth mental health services and for mental health innovation, advocacy and reform.

Ashlee Harrison – inspiring founder of Zero2Hero, shared with the students the very personal reason why she started Zero2Hero and her three tips to being a leader:

• Life does not put things in front of you that you are unable to handle.
• Respect yourself to walk away from anything that does not make you a better person.
• First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win (Gandhi).

Brant Garvey (Paralympian), Em O’Driscoll (Fremantle Dockers AFLW player) and Tyler Lovell (Olympic hockey player) were a part of the afternoon sports panel. The opportunity was given to 1000 plus students present to ask questions to Brant, Em and Tyler.

Along with the opportunities to attend sessions like “Yoga”, “Dance Beats” and “Nourish the Brain”, the students came away with a wealth of resources and tools on how to help not only themselves but their friends with wellbeing and mental health.

Miss Taryn Mohen
Head of Year 11