It's A Mind Field‪!‬ IAMF!

How comfortable are you in talking about sex and suicide? No matter what, we each have a close relationship with and strong opinions about sex and suicide. Talking candidly about them can be difficult – with each they can fill us with unease, bring up distressing memories, force us to sit with uncertainty and with fear.

*This episode has a significant focus on suicide. If you need to talk to someone, please visit the Mindframe website where you will find a list of contacts.

Guests:

On the final episode for season one, we chat with Stella Anna Sonnenbaum MPH CSSE, a Somatic Sexologist and Certified Somatic Sex Educator with a busy practice in Central London, UK, and on Zoom. Originally a licensed pharmacist from Berlin, she initially took up Tantra training over 15 years ago when seeking help and advice about how to create more intimacy in the sexless relationship she was in. 

She founded her company, Stella with Love, in 2014, with the aim of helping couples and individuals to find more intimacy with each other, and added her certifications in 2015 and 2016 to gain professional expertise in helping clients address and overcome sexual issues, in person, and online. She feels she has found her love and vocation, and gives workshops, lectures and presentations in order to make this very effective body-based approach better known, and to enable people to find more love and pleasure in their lives and relationships. 

Following Stella’s interview, Caz speaks sex with Club Mind participants, Steffi and Dave about all things intimacy and sex.

Lastly, we hear the first episode of Leon’s new podcast, The Suicide Chronicles.



Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website

For most of human history, mental illness has been largely untreatable. Sufferers lived their lives - if they survived - in and out of asylums, accumulating life's wreckage around them.

In 1948, all that changed when an Australian doctor and recently returned prisoner of war, working alone in a disused kitchen, set about an experimental treatment for one of the scourges of mankind - manic depression, or bipolar disorder. That doctor was John Cade and in that small kitchen he stirred up a miracle.

John Cade discovered a treatment that has become the gold standard for bipolar disorder - lithium. It has stopped more people from committing suicide than a thousand help lines.

Lithium is the penicillin story of mental health - the first effective medication discovered for the treatment of a mental illness - and it is, without doubt, Australia's greatest mental health story.

Guests:
Associate Professor Hans Pols is an expert in the history, sociology, and anthropology of medicine. He currently focuses on the history of colonial and postcolonial medicine in Southeast Asia. He has also published on the history of the American mental hygiene movement, the treatment of war neurosis in the armed forces of during World War II, and the history of colonial psychiatry. Hans has been investigating the history of medicine in the Dutch East Indies and Indonesia for several years as part of his research within the School of History and Philosophy of Science. He has a special interest in the history of psychiatry that dates back to his childhood.
Greg de Moore is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry based at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital. Greg works as a clinician, teacher and researcher in the fields of neuropsychiatry, general hospital psychiatry, deliberate self-harm and the history of medicine. As a recent Director of Psychiatry Training he oversaw the psychiatric education of young doctors as they worked towards becoming psychiatrists. He is affiliated with Western Sydney University and the University of Sydney. 

Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website

Many people across Australia and the world are afraid to talk about suicide. A common misconception is that talking about it will encourage and lead to suicide.

In episode 11 of It’s A Mind Field!, we start the conversation about suicide and some of the myths around it. We take a  first-hand look at the factors that drive suicidal thinking and behaviour and reveal the powerful effect that holding space for someone going through this can have.

*This episode has a significant focus on suicide. If you need to talk to someone, please visit the Mindframe website where you will find a list of contacts.

Our guests:
Max Simensen has worked in Mental Health Peer Worker roles for over 7 years in the public mental health system, with his first job being at a local headspace when he was 17. Max fell in love with being able to harness his lived experiences and personal learnings to sit with others in familiar dark places. 
Max is an openly trans man who is passionate about the rainbow community but also embracing all other diversities of the human condition and pushing for social justice.
Max has experienced intense times of suicidal thinking and behaviours over many years, and lost his younger sister two years ago after she took her own life. Max wants to change the way we look at suicide and how we hold space in those times. He is currently the SafeHaven Coordinator - which is a new peer-led service focused on offering an informal space staffed with people who have a lived experience of suicide as an alternative to emergency departments.
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In Club Mind, Leon, Caz and Chris then talk about the impact that suicidal thinking and behaviour has had on their lives.
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Tim is a nurse practitioner in mental health liaison at the Emergency Department of a major Sydney Hospital and has been in this role for over two decades.



Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website

Australia is a country that lives for sport; in the 2021 lockdown, millions of people were glued to the Olympics in Tokyo and football grand finals. But what about the mental health of athletes when they’re off the field? Renowned sports psychiatrist Dr Ranjit Menon joins It’s A Mind Field! to discuss the mental health of high-performance athletes.
On December 14 2012, the world watched in horror as a deadly school shooting unfolded at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in the United States. It was the deadliest mass shooting at an elementary school in US History. Darren Wagner has extensive experience working with mass trauma after supporting his community of Sandy Hook through a school shooting and joins It’s a Mind Field! to discuss post-traumatic growth.

Guests:
Dr Ranjit Menon is a consultant psychiatrist specialising in mood and anxiety disorders. He has an Advanced Certificate in Consultation Liaison Psychiatry and is also a leading sports psychiatrist with a Certificate of Additional Training in Sports Psychiatry awarded by ISSP. He is the current Chief Psychiatrist of the AFL and the Director of Mentalogue Clinic, which specialises in the care of athletes and other patients with mood and anxiety disorders. He is an Adjunct Research Fellow at Monash University. He is also the Vice President of the International Society for Sports Psychiatry. Dr Menon has published several peer reviewed publications. He is an external specialist for the AIS, Rugby Australia, Tennis Australia, Cricket Australia and was the on-call psychiatrist for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

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Join Patrick, Bree and Jane in ‘club mind’ where they respond to Dr Ranjit Menon’s interview and share their thoughts on sports and mental health. 
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Darren Wagner is a peer support manager, lived experience educator, researcher, and mental health comedian. Darren never avoids the ‘big topics’ and shares his experiences of mental health challenges over 30 years and how he has used his sense of humour as a coping mechanism to live with his symptoms and grow from his experiences.



Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website

Episode Nine of It’s A Mind Field! explores Aboriginal mental health and suicide.  Research shows that Indigenous people in Australia are twice as likely to die by suicide than non-Indigenous Australians. The suicide rate of Indigenous Australian children is amongst the highest in the world and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders aged between 15 and 24 are almost four times more likely to commit suicide than non-Indigenous people of the same age.
In today’s episode, we hear the voices of Aboriginal Australians talking about mental health.

*This episode has a significant focus on suicide. If you need to talk to someone, please visit the Mindframe website where you will find a list of contacts.

Guests:
 Dr Tracy Westerman AM is a proud Nyamal woman from the Pilbara region of Western Australia. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology, a Master's Degree in Clinical Psychology and Doctor of Philosophy (Clinical Psychology). She is a recognised world leader in Aboriginal mental health, cultural competency and suicide prevention achieving national and international recognition for her work. In 2021 she was given an Order of Australia (AM), and was named Australian of the Year (Western Australia) in 2018. Dr Tracy Westerman AM is also the founder of the Westerman Jilya Institute, an organisation that advances, supports and mentors Indigenous psychologists for Australia's highest risk communities.
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 In Club Mind, Roy, Bill and Leon unpack and respond to Dr Tracey Westernman AM’s interview. 
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 Andrew Thorpe is a Gunnai and Gunditjmara man living on Boonwurrung country. He is a proud father of two girls who rediscovered his love of running in 2020, after the suicide of a close friend in 2019. In the last year, Andrew has run 255km for the Black Dog Institute’s One Foot Forward campaign. He also ran his first marathon for the Indigenous Marathon Project.  Andrew Thorpe is also an important voice in lessening stigma around mental health struggles in the construction industry. 

Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website

Imagine that life is a video game and at the start of the game, everyone is gifted 90,000 ‘bonus hours’, to spend doing whatever tickles their fancy
 How would you spend this time?
 Would you explore the world with those you love the most? 
 Would you kick-back and watch re-runs of Sex and The City?
 Or maybe rescue twelve dogs and start a commune in Alaska. 
 However you’d spend this time doesn’t matter; what matters is it's yours. 
 I’m sorry to break this brief moment of fantasy; life is sadly not a utopian video-game with 90,000 bonus hours. The number 90,000 was selected because that's how long the average person spends at work their lifetime. 
 Given how much time is spent at work, it’s not surprising that work and mental health are inextricably linked. 
 In today’s episode, we’re taking a close look at work and mental health from two very different angles.

Guests:
Alexandra Rowe is an Assistant State Inspector in the Psychological Health and Safety Team at SafeWork NSW. In addition to undertaking complex investigations in the domains of workplace stress, violence, fatigue and workplace bullying, my foremost interest is in providing education and practical advice to support both workplaces and the generalist inspectorate of SafeWork NSW in relation to psychosocial hazards. Alexandra is an advocate for taking a wholistic approach to work health and safety to create and maintain not only physical but also mentally healthy workplaces across NSW.
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In Club Mind,  Caz, Chris and Leon speak candidly about how their work has interacted with their mental health. 
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Narelle Fraser was a member of Victoria Police for 27 years, 15 of those as a Detective with Homicide, Rape, Sex Crimes, Missing Persons & Child Exploitation Squads, specialising in sex offences & child abuse.   She was involved in many high profile criminal investigations.
In 2012 Narelle was diagnosed with PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) & was never able to return to Policing. She overcame many adversities to become an 'accidental' mental health advocate & keynote speaker on stress in the workplace & the challenges of first responders facing trauma & grief on a daily basis.  
Narelle has lectured in Investigative Techniques & Human Rights @ NMIT, Criminology & Specialist Interviewer Program @ Monash & is a policing & mental health commentator including an appearance on SBS Insight program 'Calling it Quits' in June 2021. Narelle has her own podcast series, 'Narelle Fraser Interviews' exploring the human side and impact of crime. 

Content warning -
Interviews include explicit language and feature topics such as depression, stigma and suicide. We acknowledge that this content may be difficult and we encourage listeners to take care of their safety and well-being.

Help is available -
Lifeline - call 13 11 14
Suicide Callback Service - call 1300 659 467 / suicidecallbackservice.org.au

IAMF! is supported by the Mental Health Commission of NSW.

IAMF! Facebook / Instagram / Website