Bendigo's Jasmine Elliott advocates for mental health awareness with headspace

Jasmine Elliott is a 21-year-old medical student living in Bendigo and she is one of just 20 young Australians chosen to be part of headspace's national youth advisory group, hY NRG.

The group brings together young people with lived experience of mental ill health to make a meaningful contribution to how headspace works, and will give Ms Elliott the opportunity to travel to Denmark for the International Adolescent and Youth Mental Health Conference from September 29 to October 1.

"I'm in the unique situation where I'm a member of the national reference group, but I'm also one of the peer support moderators with the online communities at headspace national," Ms Elliott said.

"So as a part of that other role, I submitted some abstracts with my supervisor, and two of them were accepted for presentation."

There will also be opportunities for Ms Elliott and her fellow headspace participants to co-chair aspects of the conference in what she said will be a very busy but exciting few days.

Ms Elliott's presentations will both cover aspects of the unique online communities that headspace provides. These are essentially online peer support groups for young people delivered through a live chat from six to 10pm on weekdays, which people can join anonymously.

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"One of our presentations is about the online communities in general and the type of support that we provide and how that can be integrated with other services," she said.

"And then the other [presentation] is about headspace and that is a particular chat that is run on Tuesday nights for people from the LGBTIQA+ community.

"That kind of anonymous environment online really helps young people to explore identities and be really open about those experiences, which is something that people don't really experience in their everyday lives, especially when there's still lots of misunderstandings and different perceptions that people might have in their families or their school."

The young woman who was born in Geelong and grew up in Queensland has been on placement in Bendigo for two years and will return next year to work.

"Not quite local but I certainly love being here and I'm really passionate about regional access to mental health services," she said.

"I was initially involved in my local youth reference group when I lived in Queensland in Gladstone and the centre was started when I was in year 11.

"I was actually a founding member of our youth reference group then, and then was working for headspace in a peer support role over the last few years online and found out about the hY NRG opportunity and applied at the end of 2020."

She was selected as part of the 2021 intake and said the group is now recruiting again.

"I think often young people feel like they don't have the space to share their experience, or that if they do have this space that it won't be taken seriously or listened to," she said.

"We have a diverse group of about 20 young people from all over Australia, who have very different experiences, or are at very different stages in their life.

"But we all have found working on our individual projects, in working groups, and kind of across the board that our perspectives are really valued and we get to do exciting things like go to Melbourne for a weekend and and meet each other and talk about different things that are happening within headspace.

"You get to do things that you never would expect, they trust young people who might not have qualifications to provide input often at the same level as some trained professionals which is really exciting."

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headspace chief executive Jason Trethowan said young people are engaged at all levels at headspace to help provide quality services to other young people.

"Through participation, we recognise that young people, their family and friends are the experts about their own lives and have the right to be actively engaged in the issues that affect them," he said.

"Engagement starts at the headspace centre, with local reference groups advising services and supporting community engagement.

"At headspace National, we facilitate several avenues for participation in different areas of our work, including the headspace Youth National Reference Group (hY NRG).

"The program provides them the opportunity to have meaningful input in the strategic direction of headspace services."

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