From Grassroots To Government With Mary O'Hagan Big Feels At Work: a podcast for mental health workers

Episode 21 of "Big Feels At Work" -- a podcast for mental health and addictions workers dealing with their own big feelings.

My guest Mary O'Hagan is Victoria’s first ever Executive Director of Lived Experience at the Department of Health. She leads a brand new team at the Department all with lived experience.

(Wait, they’re letting us in the public service!? Eek!)

For Mary this big new role is really just the latest in a long line of big roles.

Mary’s a kiwi, and back in the early 2000s she was New Zealand’s first “openly mad” Mental Health Commissioner, advised the UN on mental health, and ran her own mental health agency, PeerZone.

In this chat we go way back to where it all started, her early days in and out of psych wards as a young woman, and the psychiatric survivor movement she helped initiate in New Zealand in the 1980s.

Then we touch on:
-- How Mary thinks things are tracking today
-- The unique challenges of working in clinical roles with lived experience
-- Why Mary considers herself “a terrible bureaucrat”
-- What keeps her coming back after four decades.

Host: Graham Panther

What is this show? http://bigfeelsatwork.com
Who made this show? http://bigfeels.club