An innovative Queenstown-based mental health education programme has hit the international limelight.
Anna Dorsey, chief executive and founder of Headlight, addressed 400-plus delegates at this month’s International Mental Health Conference held on Australia’s Gold Coast.
Under the heading ‘Helping a Town to Help Itself’, she highlighted her team’s progress in designing and delivering the GoodYarn community programme.
It is a peer-led Queenstown-Lakes programme, adapted from a workplace model, designed to improve people’s mental health and wellbeing — and to help them support the mental wellbeing of others.
To date, more than 450 people from ‘‘priority’’ communities have participated in the GoodYarn programme since 2021.
The former district health board identified those communities — migrants, new parents, small business, elderly and youth — as being at a higher risk of mental distress and illness, following Covid.
‘‘I had a lot of interest in the work we’ve been leading here in Queenstown, which is unique to our town,’’ Dorsey says.
She also spoke about the journey her team’s on to make mental health education more accessible to other rural and remote communities.
‘‘We’re having other communities asking for this, so we’re now responding to that.’’
