Blog from Leigh Murray, Family Advisor
In Rio we just finished celebrating the feats of our world’s best sportspeople. Today at TheMHS we celebrated (on a slightly smaller scale) some of our sector’s best people, services and initiatives in NZ and Australia. In introducing them, NZ MH Commissioner Kevin Allan reminded us how important it is to keep celebrating success which TheMHS has been doing for 25 years through these awards.
As a family member I was encouraged and inspired to hear about the innovation and dedication demonstrably making such a positive difference for individuals, families, whanau and communities. We actually have a lot to celebrate in mental health and addictions yet most of us would agree that the general public have a mostly negative view of our sector. The public focus only seems to go on our sector when things go wrong.
How could we start to turn this around? Perhaps we could put some resource into promoting what we do beyond our own sector. Maybe next year TheMHS could introduce a new award for the initiative that has best clarified what we do to the general public!
Congratulations to all 2016 TheMHS Award winners and keep up the good work!
