Interview with Jenny Smith NSW Volunteer of the Year by the Mental Health Foundation of Australia

Jenny Smith is a Consumer Advocate who is actively involved in the mental health & suicide prevention sector. Jenny sits on the Consumer Consultative Committee at One Door Mental Health as well as the CESPHN-Mental Health Suicide Prevention Advisory Committee and Community Council. Jenny works voluntarily as a Youth Mentor with Raise Foundation, and as a Digital Crisis Supporter with Lifeline 

In 2022 she was the recipient of the NSW Volunteer of the Year & Adult Volunteer of the Year for Mid-Western Region Sydney and named NSW Volunteer of the Year by the Mental Health Foundation of Australia.

Transcript

Joel Kleber: 0:00

Welcome to love Experience podcast. I'm Joel Kleber. In today's episode, I've got an interview with lived experience advocate Jenny Smith. Now Jenny reached out to share her story. And I think it's a great story to really good, honest, and genuine account of her life journey with mental illness and also in her family as well. And to provide some nice, great insights, which I hope you can get a lot from. And if you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to leave a review. And thank you to God for reaching out via the lived experience podcast.com website to be a guest as you can as well. So if you want to, please feel free to reach out to me, I hope you enjoy the episode today with Jenny Smith,

Jenny Smith: 0:32

as he reached out to me, you know, coming in here saying he wants to share your story, which is fantastic. And I really appreciate that I wish more people would do that. So maybe we're gonna talk about first your story and your background and your lived experience with mental health mental illness. I was diagnosed with depression anxiety. Many years ago, I think I was lucky because I was under a good GP, who knew the family story knew me quite well. So I was put on to me occasion and the first medication she put me on, which for me, so yeah. But I've had a lot of things that have happened in my life that probably contributed to having mental illness. And there's also been a genetic side to that as well. Yes, I'm gonna talk a bit more about them. Most of them contributing factors or bearable what's happened. Basically, years ago, I was bullied quite a lot at school, I had quite a bad experience at university. I guess I've put a lot of pressure onto myself and pretty much just got burnt out. From that I went through unemployment, and worked for the DOL and a few things like that. And also, with all that happening, I was trying to cope with my father having a mental illness and my sister going through similar it's probably one thing led to another. Yeah, yeah, registering online, a beat where you do talk about your father. Now I had a mother with a mental illness. That's why I do this sort of podcast and share about that. So I'm gonna talk about that your father and his challenges and obviously, how it affected you. My dad was diagnosed with schizophrenia back in 1992. Before that, we didn't know anything about mental illness because it was pretty much doctor about at the time in 1982, and his mother passed away. He started displaying different behaviors that my mom notice, but she thought it was probably part of grieving and not mental endless, because no one talked about it back in the 80s. Back in the 80s. That was like talking about sinoder drugs. We had the AIDS, HIV epidemic and things like that. But mom found out my grandmother, which was dad's mum was also taking an anti psychotic drug, but she never actually spoke about it. So go for your sleep, goes right back to her into the family. And back in 92, after a pretty traumatic event that my mother was involved with, he had a couple of pretty major psychotic episodes in that. And that was pretty traumatic for all of us. After one of those episodes, he actually went to a nearby Medical Center. So what are the doctors that sent him to a local psychiatric hospital, he stayed overnight and discharged itself the next morning without undergoing a proper assessments. So he was back home and we didn't know what to do or anything but the crisis, the hospital, obviously got in contact with the crisis team and they came out and spoke to us and encouraged him to go back to the hospital. But Deb been Doug will rent he was stubborn. But he did go and speak to our family GP at the time. And he was referred to a psychiatrist that started chemo medication, that he'd didn't take it all the time, which made it quite hard to deal with chemicals. We weren't sure what type of murky be like whether he'd be good mood or not. So good mood and things like that. But when my grandmother died a few years later, because I was about 12 in 1985. And I started noticing just slight behavior changes. I thought something's not right because he was talking to himself, he was smoking a lot more. He was walking up and down the hallway a loss and things that weren't quite normal that being a 12 year old. I couldn't sort of know really know what was happening with Iran. your mother, your mother at the time? Did she know much about it? Or was it just something they just always knew mom didn't know anything about mental illness at the time, she actually had to go to the library and get some books out. Because back then no one spoke about it. There was no internet. So it was really hard to find information. Yeah, it's a good point. Because when you say early 90s, it's it sounds like it's not too long ago, but it is in regards to this. So just to make it clear for people that back then, obviously, mental illness, from your perspective, as you said, you might have to go to the library to get books to learn about about the condition like it was something that was not even even spoken about as a possibility. If it was, it was sort of really hush hush, or very big stigma, no one talked about it. So how do you think about now that how do you think the change has come along? Jenny, regards to how we talk about a bit more now. Do you think it's still what long way to come? Or have you seen the progress? I think there's still lag ago, but we are talking about it more people know about it, that gets out there. And people do have depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, whatever. But there's still a stigma around but things are getting better each day. And where do you see the stigma? Still? What do you still think there used to be progression? There's probably a still a stigma where doctors are concerned and things like that. It depends. Some cultures talk about mental illness freely while other cultures don't or the Asian cultures don't talk about it, as we do. And yeah, absolutely. Now, when you were growing up with your father with this, did anyone know about your father to help you out? Or did you schools help you out it? Was there any assistance that was provided to you? Or what do you remember the support like, back then? We having support virtually, at school, there was a special education teacher when I went to high school, but that was about it. We had nothing? Did anyone take an interest in it or no? Regard See, you said, unfortunately, I heard the word bullying. I talked a bit about bullying as well, I was bullied a little bit at school myself. So you've got this thing going on at home, then you've got to go to school. And you've got bullying as well. How did you manage to do before that stress, I tried to block out what was happening at home and concentrate on my school, work at school, and that most of the kids who are right, but there were a few that bullied me quite harshly to the point where the police was the only calling at one stage because I've been bullied by girl. She was a year ahead of me. And she bullied me in the school brands a few times. And I just chose to ignore it. But then I was at the local shopping center. On the second day, I was just minding my own business having an ice cream before I came home. And she came up to me and pretty much pushed the ice cream into my face. And when the school found out about that the police weren't nearly clogging, because it was obviously assault. Yeah, sorry. But I guess my parents, I mean, obviously, I spoke to my parents about it after it happened as well. But they won't leave it go at this stage because they want me making statements or going through the court system and things like that. But I was told by the Deputy Principal, if it happened again, the police would be cogging and things would be a slow. No, sorry to hear that. From your perspective. Maybe don't describe for people what schizophrenia is. And how would you describe it? It was to you. Schizophrenia is people they have hallucinations and delusions about things that are not real. Say my dad thought man was caught cooking up snips on one thing he thought if you're the crumbs and that were actually dragged when it was like it was probably just herbs or salt or something like that. And dad was hearing all these voices that were telling him to do different things. And I don't know, it's just a whole body of different behaviors that aren't real, but it seems real to them. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there is an answer that she needs because my mom had bipolar disorder one and if you look at bipolar disorder, it has once it had like a definition but everyone's it's everyone's a little bit different. Everyone has different I mean, it's it's for everyone and different depending on everyone could be diagnosed with depression, but everyone's got their own different experience depression or they've got their own experience of anxiety. See, my sister's got depression, anxiety and schizophrenia as well. But her story is completely different from dads. And that's different from my side. It's amazing. Yeah, because it's you can't really put a definition on it even though it's got this label as you said, there's these different behaviors and your sister is different in regards to what your dad behaviors maybe were. So yeah, it's pretty it's pretty amazing. What from what I know in regards to awareness now bipolar and schizophrenia to illnesses that don't hear much spoken about. And schizophrenia, I think most people generally would say probably that's deemed as a higher, I probably really suit like more serious than, let's say, other conditions. So why is it? Why do you think that's not spoken about as much as other conditions? I probably because I guess the bad Maggie are reporting considers schizophrenics to be really dangerous. And stuff or people in general with mental illness to be dangerous. So remember, this was a few years ago, at the beginning of schizophrenia Awareness Week, I was watching where the national newspapers and the first three stories were different crimes. But all the people had schizophrenia or similar mental illnesses. It's like one story after another. It's like, do you national nieces doubt schizophrenia Awareness Week, and you're making out people with schizophrenia to be dangerous, where people aren't dangerous. Hello, as they medicated correctly, I mean, they're most likely hurt themselves and someone else. That's a good point, because I think we've schizophrenia for whatever reason, it seems to be deemed in your right as a violent or as an explosive sort of condition where someone can just explode and attack others. But when you just said them, which is spot on, is that they're more likely to hurt themselves than anyone else. Yes, that's a real risk. That with your dad, like, obviously, there's a lot of things that come with schizophrenia. But when your dad was good, what can you just tell people what he was like when he was good, because I know with my mum, my mum was not I talked about bipolar disorder wasn't all bad, it was all built good as well. So we're gonna talk about the good sides of it with the condition. What happened many years ago, after he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, obviously, he was he was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. And the doctors and psychiatrists actually put him on a depressed site as well. And he was starting to take that. And Mum actually said to us, he was back to being the person she knew before he had schizophrenia. He was totally different, he was a lot more calmer. He was easy to get along with which, when he was really unwell with schizophrenia, I tried to get along with him at different times, but he would get quite verbally abusive with me and things like that. But that last 18 months when he had the cancer, he was just so easy to live with. I got along with him really? Well, it was probably the best the best 18 months I've had since I was little with it. So obviously, being on the two medications obviously changed what was happening in his brain. What was the treatment for your dad? Normally, what was the sort of medication? Or was it something where he had medication, then it didn't adhere to it? There would be hospitalization? And what was the treatment or how was the condition manage. He was held on to one anti psychotic drug by other psychiatrists, he was taking much, but when he knew it was going to help him he did take it, but they're gonna think he had a reaction. So they swapped him to another anti psychotic drug that I mean, he was taking it, but he still wasn't really well, and that he was still walking around, and still hearing voices and things like that. But I don't know that sort of made him better when he was taking the antidepressant as well. That must have even things they already knew spraying. Yeah, it's interesting how it works. They don't ask me, Stan. Oh, but it's gonna say with the widget that ever hospitalized maybe didn't talk about No, he was hospitalized. He only went initially because the medical centers sent him but yeah, he will stay there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. zation T hag was obviously winning a cancer and that was pretty impressive is schizophrenia to not have any I know you don't. You said your dad wouldn't stayed up. It's pretty impressive, because it's not that's not probably the typical thing. Most people would have maybe hospitalization too. So credit credit to him for not having to go there. Maybe let's talk about now a bit more about your story. So we're going to talk about your journey with mental illness and maybe talking about insights of going from that. Basically, I was diagnosed like I said, with depression, anxiety. Many years ago, I went through stages of changes in appetite, energy and difficulty sleeping. I had difficulty concentrating. I guess headaches and stomach problems and all that sort of thing. I had Braille fees and I was really worried about all sorts of things that was just combination of probably all the different signs and symptoms of both of them that got right on top of me I wait to speak to my GP stalk me on medication, and then things actually start getting a bit better for me, I started getting involved with the Kraft group, a few bits and pieces. And then my sister went through another bad stage. But then I thought, because I was well enough at the time, I thought, all Dad's gone, Mom's not gonna be around forever, as much as likely to be around forever. But in reality, no one is, so I thought I'd be getting big trained up and that to help my sister in case she has problems down the track, which occasionally, she still does have a few problems here and there that I can step in and help her with now. Then I got more into the advocacy side of things. I've been doing volunteer work over the last few years. So different organizations. And yeah, let's talk about you. When you say trained up, what do you mean by trained up, I went to a few different courses, I did my mental health first aid, certificate, a lot more about the mental illnesses, and all the coping strategies and how to help people that have a mental illness and things like that. Let's talk about some of the strategies then for people who don't know, what are some strategies that you use or that you've employed to help other people cope with their condition? I guess the main one is to talk to someone first stop and ask for help if you're doing it, because there's always gonna be someone around that can help you with whatever you're dealing with, like a counselor or psychologist, psychiatrist, whatever step but basically, I just ate relatively healthy. Now array going to be aircraft coloring and things like that. And just, I guess, focus more on the positive than the negative side of life. So you found that's really helped you is those those things as you said, nutrition? Yeah, I can activity do you do much we'd like to do like, get together with other people often like as a community sort of thing? Or what do you do there? Yeah, I go out with my Cisco friends for coffee and movies, and shopping and whatever. Yeah. And that's an important things in mental health. We always talk about conditions and talking to psychiatrists. But it's those things you just mentioned, like, you know, community relationships in nutrition, you know, doing something that stimulates the mind that you like, doing? Yeah, those sorts of things really do help. I keep in contact with friends by email, and social media and things like that, too. So awesome. Now, with your advocacy, you're involved in a lot of programs and stuff, I think finding north and all those different things. Yeah, maybe don't tell people about those programs and what they do, I've been involved in so much. So I'm a volunteer rephrase Foundation, and they mentor, young teenagers, like 1314 year olds, we take them through a 20 week program over to school terms. And they learned skills like resilience and coping skills and things like that, how to deal with friendships, how to deal with all sorts of things. And another program is I'm obviously involved with Lifeline. So I'm on the digital service side, pick up all the text messages, and messages that come through the website, on their web chat program. So I do that. So things are not on the phones, as such, but I find a lot of young people are using the web chat and the text service to contact us. That's cool. Yeah, a lot. And even now, when I talk to some of these young kids, they still don't know where to go for help. Because I was on the chat one time with the young person. Now we're about 12 or 13. Know About kids help, like start by telling them that I know about Kids HelpLine that can help you. They actually obviously contacted Kids HelpLine after lifeline and hopefully got the help that they need. And how have you been doing that for lifeline? I've probably a being about six months with Lifeline but with raise foundation mentoring, I've this will be my sixth the year when we start back in term two, and what sort of kids are doing that program? Like is it something like is it selective kids? Or is it just a blanket group of kids or who's going into that program you help? Well, they have a program counselor allocated to each of the schools from Rice Foundation, they go into the schools and talk to the well being team about what young people would benefit from the program that are in year eight or nine. And then they select to gathering information session and they find out a bit more about the program. Now obviously they have to get their parents consent or guardians consent before they start the program. With this, and what changes do you see in the program? From what say, when they come in at the start to the end? What sort of results or differences are you seeing in the people, I guess a lot of young kids come in without lower confidence. They don't know any coping strategies, and they don't know where to go for help, and things like that. But by the time they finish the training weights, they're feeling more confident, and they know where to go for the help. They know how to deal with some of the problems of life. And what's a coping strategy. Like, it's an interesting thing, even though I don't really know what a coping strategy is. So when we don't educate me about maybe a couple of coping strategies, or some resilience tools, that you, you train with the kids, we just talked to them about how to bounce back from different adversities that they might have. We speak to them about how they might deal with different situations, if they cover up, they have a situation that there might be drugs or alcohol involved. How would they go about dealing with that? Yeah, I was gonna say, with, you know, with the advocacy, and you involved a lot of things, what do you think governments need to do more off? Because you said at the start, there's still a stigma with different things, which there definitely is. So what do you think can be done more? Because there's obviously a lot of money filtering into the space now, because there's a bit of governments or all, it's been, it's a political, good thing to do. So they're putting a lot of money into it. But um, where do you think the money needs to go? What do you think that needs to be done to improve things? I think most of the government programs have only really got short term funding, like for a couple of years or something, they've got really strict criteria they've got. And that means people are on wagging, really sticking into some of these programs, and say, after a couple of years, the funding cut out and the people using the services or something or left to go and find something else, because governments change, obviously, every three or four years, each time a different governments in they've got different ideas about where the funding should go. Yeah. What do you think's the most effective use of funding, if you can put it to if you had to allocate budget funds to something where do you think's the most effective use your experience? Probably, if I had funding myself, I probably putting into early intervention programs like rice, Fran, de Xiang have put it into training education for school teachers and other frontline workers, like for everyone to have a mental health first aid certificate, so they know how to handle different situations, I put money into low key workers in communities settings, and hospitals and things like that. I'm familiar with P workers, my mum, my mum used to have P workers and stuff. So messages from people who are not familiar with him. What is a P worker? And what did I do? P worker is a person with the lived experience or either had their own lived experience, or they've got experience as a carer, and they just help people navigate the system and navigate thing is the problems that might come up for them. Yeah, depends on what the person actually wants. Yeah, and those people are important because there's a level of respect instantly there if they know that that person's good a similar background or similar experiences, as opposed to a psychologist or psychiatrist who might it's more of a medical background where P workers have their own experience. So they mentioned early intervention program manager to talk about that. Now, you mentioned the race foundation. But it's an interesting things I haven't heard much about these programs myself. So what's what's the goal? Exactly if the early intervention program is getting highs are getting the high risk people that the counselor thinks it might have some issues and then try and give them tools to an early stage to help them give them help at the earliest stage before things get to a stage where they need more serious help. Now regards to stigma, what do you think can be done more to reduce stigma? What would you do? Speaking about it more openly. Try tagging people with mental illness with the same respect as you will get anyone else shall be compassion towards us. Because at the end of the day, was still a human being with gay marriage cash in our community awareness, but there is a lot now the lot there was 3040 years ago. When you say respect, has there been situations where you felt as though you haven't been respected? Due to someone this really discrimination or anything like that? Oh, yeah. Because I haven't understood anything about mental illness. Can you talk about a situation so I'm interested to hear about how someone's how that's affected you? I have one experience that I was seeing in medical specialists about something quite a few years ago. He was more interested in the medical problem I was there for. And I was getting annoyed with the way he was speaking to me and all that. I just pretty much broke down in tears. And he said, Are you still taking your medication? I said, Yeah, that's like he was more interested in medication. My feelings. Yeah. Have you ever experienced pain with medical professionals or with psychiatrists or psychologists? Have you found them overall, that also gave a psychologist or psychiatrist It was another meaningful specialist. Right? Okay. Yeah. How's your experience been, though, in general, with psychologists and psychiatrists? Have you found it? I haven't had much to do with psychiatrists. I've had more to do with psychologists and counselors and found them quite good. And my own GPS been really good as well. That's a good thing. You got to have that you know, you're the good GP and a good if you've got your psychologist, so you can say that to judo can work together? I was gonna say, any tips for people to find a good psychologist? Because it's not easy. It's not just sometimes for people it's not. You know, they think it's the first psychologist That's right. For most often it's not. So how long did it take? You did find your your right psychologist or counselor? Probably not too long. But I know if my sister she's had a few over the time. And a couple of weeks. She really didn't get on well with but she's had a couple that she's really worked. Well, we think that's make a real big difference. She's under one at the moment that she works really well with, what's the sort of feedback you're getting from it? What's the difference between the good one and the bad one per se? Well, the one that shouldn't get on with too well, I guess they weren't listening as much as what some of them do. Yeah, was a big thing. It has a difference in added like behavior. Like have you noticed though, what's the difference? You notice from the Third Avenue psychologist, makes us a lot happier. She'll even told me she listens. She takes notice of what I'm saying? Yeah, that's good to hear. Now with yourself, what are some three? What are three actionable tips that someone who is struggling to implement that you think, is something that anyone can do, but it can definitely help with their mental health? Ask for help will be the main one, go and talk to someone GP friend, family school teacher, if you're at school, someone that you can trust? Obviously, self care, backshell you look after yourself, go for a walk or do something, eat healthy, listen to music, do something you enjoy. There are things keep focusing on the positive, you will get through it. Yeah. No worries. Well, is there anything you want to leave us before with Trigiani? Any final thoughts or anything? Or where can people learn more about you? Do you have any? You have a website or anything? Are there any stories available online for people to read or don't have a website, but there are a few stories along I'll give you the links to that you can share on the website. Yeah, Jenny Smith, we can type it into Google. I'm sure they'll come up and yeah, yeah. Well, thank you very much for your time. God knows it's been a while in the making. So thank you very much for your time and for sharing your stories. I really appreciate it. And good luck with everything and stay in touch. Thanks.

Joel Kleber: 28:15

Thank you very much to Jenny Smith for her time and sharing your lived experience and if you want to share yours as well head to live the experience podcast.com If you did enjoy the show, or think it helped you in some way, please make sure to leave a review to help me out. Until next episode. I hope you have a great week.