The resource is ” your own path to success” is a 4 minute duration video. IT aims to raise awareness of the wide  scope of disability.

To find out more contact your disability coordination program officer or visit http://www.yourownpathtosuccess.com/

AS A child, I was frightened of mentally unwell people. I still am. By mentally unwell I mean people in the grip, the iron grip, of psychosis; those you see on the street, meet at parties – or have in your family.

My fear has nothing to do with being physically harmed, because I know that, despite this week’s tragedy and the subsequent media coverage, very few mentally ill people are violent. My fear is to do with the way their reality obliterates me. Or my concept of ”me”. So I write the word ”frightened” knowing how feeble it is. It cannot remotely calibrate the paralysis I feel when confronted by someone mentally unwell or, pre-political correctness, beset by madness.

I am not talking about being depressed, anxious or neurotic. I mean someone split-off from the reality I inhabit and the reality they usually inhabit. Episodes of psychosis are a collision of realities. I have a reality that includes myself, acknowledges my individuality, but constantly takes in and monitors other people’s reality and adjusts to it. It is how we all collaborate to make a community functional.

The critical thing is the adjusting. Those with psychosis have only their own reality, driven by an internal compulsion that will not let them absorb any other reality. The condition obliterates everything in its path and that is what makes it so shocking and distressing. These are people living with voices, delusions and hallucinations. Madness – before it was colonised by popular culture and advertising – was a precise and solemn word for this most anguished human condition. What else is Munch’s The Scream but a translation of such anguish?

The visible distress of the mentally unwell is as profound as it is unreachable. Yet who does not feel that adrenalin jump of recognition? My (irrational) fear is because I see flashes of parts of myself. It is not just sympathy or empathy; it is involuntary recognition.

On the mornings when I do not want to clean my teeth, shower and dress, the days I do not want to talk, other days when I want to talk non-stop, the nights when I feel so intensely myself I am as exhausted as I am exhilarated; somehow, by luck and circumstance, I keep perspective. I function. The inappropriate fragments of self do not leak out or take over, and I can hold myself together.

Others have more trouble. One in five people will suffer from some sort of mental illness in their lifetime. Three per cent will have reality-related disorders; schizophrenia, psychosis or bipolar mood disorder. Fifty-four per cent of the homeless have a mental illness. Forty-one per cent of prisoners have a mental illness, often masked by substance abuse.

The good news is that most people who go through a period of schizophrenia, of psychosis, of madness never repeat it. They move back into and on with their ordinary lives, perhaps helped with medication, perhaps not.

Sandy Jeffs is a Melbourne poet who has lived with episodic schizophrenia for the past 33 years. Sandy’s reality is living with voices; jeering, loathing voices that – when they are truly present – make her life untenable. ”Their existence and power rest in my continued helplessness,” she writes. She has recently published a book about what it is to inhabit her skin, Flying with Paper Wings: Reflections on Living with Madness (The Vulgar Press). The writing is as controlled as it is confronting. It is about families and genetic or social inheritance, but ultimately it is about ignorance and its first-born, fear.

Ignorance on the part of parents who did not know how to go about loving their children, ignorance on the part of some doctors, ignorance in the general community as well as in psychiatric wards. It also details extraordinary friendships and unlimited, unexpected kindnesses in surprising places.

Flying with Paper Wings is anything but a misery memoir. Glittering with black humour and without self-pity, it shifts other people’s perceptions of mental distress beyond kindness, compassion, sympathy and fear into some deeper perception. The mentally unwell have not disappeared with the decommissioning of the ironically named ”asylums”, and as communities expand, stress and fracture at a speed we are not made to cope with, we will see more forms of mental illness.

It is easy to look the other way, or to stuff the outstretched hand in the street with money as you take to your heels. Read this exceptional book. It takes you beyond your own narrow terror towards something that might be called insight.

Helen Elliott is a Melbourne writer.

Source: The Age
www.smh.com.au/…an-insight-to-counter-fear-of-the-mentally-ill

 www.answd.org/policy.html

9. ANSWD believes that the term “mental illness” should be changed to “Psychosocial Disabilities “. Ongoing training, counselling, psychological therapies, confidence boosting activities, and support for part time study and part time work should be provided to persons with Psychosocial Disabilities.

*Disability Parking Permit Goes National *

People with disability will have access to a uniform parking permit after the Australian Transport Council today endorsed the introduction of a new national disability parking permit, which is to be rolled out across the country by the end of 2010.

Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities and Children’s Services, Bill Shorten, said the Rudd Government had provided $1.6 million to develop the new universal parking permit, as part of its work towards harmonising existing parking schemes.

“The current system is confusing and outdated,” Mr Shorten said.

“With over 100 different types of parking permits and differing eligibility criteria spread across the country, it causes too much undue stress.

“The introduction of the new permit is a start towards ending this confusion and will make parking easier for the 900,000 existing and  future permit holders.

“The highly visible and recognisable design will also assist interstate authorities to recognise and enforce the permit.

“All permits will include several security features to help identify legitimate holders from forgeries, including hologram foil, micro text and solar flare transition printing.

Mr Shorten said that the Rudd Government had consulted widely with the community over the development of the proposed national scheme

“The community has been closely involved in the permit’s development, with a series of national consultations conducted earlier this year providing valuable feedback.

A total of 277 people attended consultation meetings and 3,675 people contacted the call centre hotline for a copy of the discussion paper.

“The permit is a major part of the /Harmonisation of the Disability Parking Schemes /initiative which aims to overhaul the current disability parking schemes.

“State and Territory Transport Departments have worked with the Australian Government to progress the Scheme and will continue to work  towards reaching a national eligibility criteria and minimum standards for concessions.”

 Today’s endorsement by the Australian Transport Council follows the endorsement by the Community and Disability Services Ministers Conference in September and reiterates the Government’s commitment to improving and delivering services for people with disability.

The permit design can be viewed at www.fahcsia.gov.au/sa/disability/…disability_parking_scheme/

UQ-Link Manager Deborah McLachlan said the Tertiary Taste, which was run in conjunction with USQ Springfield campus and Bremer TAFE on May 23, provided information about transitioning from school to higher education.

The eight students who attended the information session hailed from Bremer State High School, St Mary’s College and St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace, and had a range of disabilities, including vision and hearing impairment, cerebral palsy, attention deficit disorder and autistic spectrum disorder.

Ms McLachlan said the Tertiary Taste aimed to encourage students and their parents to consider higher education. Information was provided on travelling to campus, moving around the campus, reasonable adjustments, using the library, assessment considerations, industry placement and confidentiality.

Nicholas Nielsen, who is in Year 12 at St Joseph’s College, Gregory Terrace, and has a vision impairment, said the Tertiary Taste showed him that UQ Ipswich would accommodate his needs.

“I was definitely nervous about uni, but yeah, the Tertiary Taste day gave a great insight to the atmosphere of the campus and an understanding of how to go about life there,” Mr Nielsen said.

He said his daily life had already taught him that his disability could be managed.

“You just develop methods of getting around with what sight you have,” Mr Nielsen said.

“I use a laptop to do most of my school work which has a program on it called ZoomText and I use binoculars to see the board in class and ridiculously big magnifying glasses.”

Year 11 St Mary’s College student Tara Heffernan, who also has a vision impairment, agreed that the Tertiary Taste had made her feel that university was an achievable goal in spite of her disability.

“The biggest concern I had about going to uni was that I would be alone,” Miss Heffernan said.

“When I found out that both TAFE and UQ have resources and make accommodations for people with disabilities, I felt much more comfortable with the idea of uni, especially knowing I didn’t have to do it alone and I would always have support.”

Mr Nielsen said he was considering a Bachelor of Behavioural Studies at UQ Ipswich and Miss Heffernan is looking forward to indulging her interest in the Visual Arts.

www.uq.edu.au/news/index.html?article=12218