Grief, Hope and Doing Good.

At the Just Be Nice Project we believe in taking responsibility for ensuring the housing, employment and good mental health of individuals and communities in need. Ensuring that people in need get the help they need, when they need it, for as long as they need it, regardless of how they come to need help.

One barrier to implementing these outcomes is the conversational homogenisation of all forms of poor 'mental health', and the constant separation of mental health from other kinds of material disadvantage.

The term 'Poor Mental Health' covers conditions as severe as psychiatric conditions like Schizophrenia (affecting approx 1 in 100 people), bi-polar/manic depressive illness (affecting up to 1 in 50 people), to anxiety disorders which are caused by a variety of causes (and affect up to 14 in 100 people), all the way through to grief and sadness (which will unsurprisingly affect approximately 100 out of 100 people at some point in their lives).

To understand the severity of the impact of poor mental health, stress, lifestyle and environment factors and to assess the at-risk nature of individuals and communities, we typically do not start with a scale of 'good'-to-'bad' mental health.

We assess and use a scale that assesses levels of 'Despair' to 'Agency'.

High levels of despair occur when people believe that they have little to no control over their present or future. When they believe that it is 'hopeless' to try anything. When they feel like there is 'no point' attempting to do things to change or improve their situation. When people and communities feel like they have 'tried everything to no avail'.

People can be surrounded by love, resources and have fantastic support around them, and still rate very highly on a scale that measures despair. Feeling like they have no control, no real opportunity, no room to breathe and no agency - leaving them at very high risk of engaging in high-risk behaviours.

Conversely, people with high levels of 'Agency', believe that they are empowered to have control over the direction of their lives and futures. They believe that they actions will lead to positive outcomes and that there are avenues they can pursue to achieve their goals. Communities with agency believe that things are possible for them, and they understand and feel that they are well supported and resourced to achieve positive outcomes. People with high levels of agency are empowered; with high levels of opportunity, understanding of that opportunity and how to utilise it, and a desire to make the most of the control they have in their lives.

People can be isolated, destitute, broke, homeless and largely unsupported and still feel confident in their capacity to work their way out of it, lean into opportunities that exist and build the life that they want to build. This leaves individuals and communities at a much lower-risk of high-risk activities, amenable to assistance, and capable of leaning into relevant opportunities. Appearances are not the be all and end all of assessments in this space.

Grief, and sadness, are rational, normal, human responses to tough times. Being sad, experiencing grief, is not depression, and this distinction is important. Clinically, in the community and amongst the lexicon of tough times, there is a distinction between depression and sadness that needs to be maintained in order to better create and maintain relevant interventions and supports for people in the midst of difficult circumstances.

Agency is critical to improving the mental health of communities and individuals engaging with and affected by tragedy and difficulty. If we do not give individuals and communities a sense of agency, through effective intervention, relevant support, adequate community engagement, responsibility and reflection, then we run the risk of turning a situation of rational grief, into one of long-term despair.

Critical to that is the acknowledgement that those in need will be observing the distribution of funds and feeling either seen/heard/supported, or abandoned in the process. Knee-jerk fundraising, that prioritises visibility & internet virality over rational understanding of the outcomes needed and stated by organisations receiving that fundraising will invariably elevate levels of despair as less visible communities and individuals feel left behind, unsupported and helpless.

Hope is not created by simply telling people in need to 'have hope', and hope is critical in maintaining the positive opportunities for mental health to improve during times of crisis.

Hope is created and maintained by ensuring that 'agency' is cultivated through the relevant, long-term, rational, inclusive, outcomes based, dynamic, responsive allocation of support and resources with a stated aim of not only 'helping', but actually reaching an outcome. At the Just Be Nice Project we will not consider the job done until these communities are fully supported into permanent housing, relevant, meaningful, adequate, gainful employment and good mental health.

Economic development, human support, understanding and ensuring that resources are well managed into these communities, (like all communities that need assistance for any reason), is required for the long term. I certainly hope that we can temper the short-term hype with the long-term support and empowerment of these communities.

When the smoke clears, literally and figuratively, there will be work to be done. As the smoke is brought under control, there remains many communities and individuals that still require assistance and agency, whether they've been affected by the fires or not.

As we face yet another tragedy, in what will like be a decade of increasing levels of extreme weather, potentially international conflict and possible economic upheaval. It is time to assess what we want for all Australians and indeed all people across the world.

We believe that it is important to ensure that everyone is housed, safe, economically independent, educated, has good mental health and access to the utilities commensurate with life in the 21st Century, and all interventions should be held accountable to reaching those outcomes for people in need, regardless of who they are, and how they come to need help.

If you'd like to make 2020 the year where your impact is amplified and those who need help for any reason get it, don't hesitate to get in touch. Or support the Just Be Nice Project for the long-term here. In the meantime, consider also looking after your family, friends, neighbours and those you interact with every day.

One day hopefully we won't need any individual funding pages ever, because everyone in need will get the help they need, regardless of whether they were re-tweeted by a celebrity or not.