Kaleidoscope is a program offering support to children and young people aged four to 17 years who are living in a family impacted by mental health concerns or challenges.
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Earlier this month Kaleidoscope and CommunityLinks launched the Platform Artspace to engage the community with its work.
Platform Artspace is a place where creativity, wellbeing and community come together, says doctor Anthony King, who has been pivotal in getting the space up and running.
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"It comes out of a local push through Wollondilly and Wingecarribee shires to improve and increase the mental health service options in the local government areas," Dr King said.
"Six years ago you had the government mental health services and a few private psychologists and not much else. There were big gaps.
"We're trying to do things a little bit differently. We didn't simply want to do face-to-face counselling, we wanted to do health promotion and group work in addition to counselling. We wanted to provide a much more holistic service," he said.
Mr King said the goal was to take the services out to the schools and to also create a drop-in centre and group work opportunities for kids whose parents suffer from a mental illness, or who suffer from anxiety and depression themselves.
At the moment the service receives up to 150 referrals a month.
"There was a huge need within the community," Dr King said.
"The need for mental health support across the board but particularly for young people was pretty clear. There was a strong need."
CommunityLinks now has a drop-in centre for young people called Walk In, Reframe which is a counselling service and You In Mind which is for adults aged 25 years and over.
"We're basically seeing people from age four up and providing counselling services and group work services," Dr King said.
"We're working alongside the hospitals and the acute mental health services and the GPs. Within all of those services we have a particular responsibility and that is to address their individual needs but to also promote education."
Creativity is "so important" to mental health, according to Dr King.
With this in mind the organisation has turned what was an empty hallway at their Station Street offices into a gallery, to display work by clients of all ages.
"Mental health among other things like skills and knowledge are promoted by imagination," Dr King said.
"I would go so far as to say that a healthy self is a self that can imagine and connect; the ability to collect yourself as you go through life and you face the stresses and strains and distresses that crop up in day-to-day life.
"Being able to collect yourself is a mentally healthy attribute that can be developed through mental health programs," he said.
That ability to regulate can involve creativity and imagination.
"To manage yourself through stress and distress; to manage relationships healthily. It can all sort of include imagination," Dr King said.
In talking with clients he has found that "everyone has got creativity".
"Some people exercise it more than others," Dr King said.
"In my work I'm always asking people: 'where does your imagination and creativity fit?' In their life, and in their mental health."
He said you often discovered that people were doing creative things.
"I draw that out," Dr King said.
The Platform Artspace is a place for those creative works to be displayed and enjoyed by the wider community.
Dr King said it was a way to reduce the stigma around mental health, and to invite the wider community into the conversation.
"I've always persevered with insisting that the question of creativity and art is part of my research," Dr King said.
The space at 1/68-70 Station Street started with a blank floor.
"At the beginning of the year I got wind of the fact that Wingecarribee Shire Council was offering some money to do creative things," Dr King said.
"Warwick Keen, a First Nations fellow from Nowra, was interested in doing a floor mural for us. Prior to that this was just a drab unpainted hallway."
It is now a creative platform for the imaginative sharing of stories.
"We're a mental health and wellbeing service working to take the stigma out of mental health," Dr King said.
"From here we want to become part of the community."
Want to get involved? Contact mhintake@communitylinks.org.au.
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