From the River to the Pub

Julie:

Last Thursday I went to the NSW Farmers Mental Health Network meeting in Sydney. This is a network set up by NSW Farmers with some of the key mental health and welfare bodies, to help progress good mental health in the bush. The meetings are held about 3 times/year and focus on issues from the mental health blueprint.

This meeting spent some time looking at some of the employment and other implications of the reduced water allocation in the Murray Darling Basin (more on this to follow in future blogs). We also looked at the lack of good ways of presenting drug and alcohol information and education to community members and the network has undertaken to look at this issue over further meetings.

The meetings for the Network are always stimulating and are a good example of rural organisations taking the initiative to address some of the issues in the bush.