Our story

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Mood Mentors is the culmination of over 15 years of research, experience and training across all industries, public and private health sectors and the education space . 

Designing an evidence-based and scalable psychological model to improve mental health awareness and literacy, and upskill those without a mental health background to provide ongoing effective support to others has been a long-standing commitment of ours. 

One of our passions is older person mental health and the significant dearth of mental health workers in the are.  One the earliest roots of Mood Mentors was the development of a unique training program tailored to aged care workers. We designed a program that trained aged care workers to recognise and respond to the changing mental heath needs of seniors in their care. This successful program was rolled out across NSW and QLD, and led to increased knowledge of mental illness, reduced stigma, and improved their responsiveness to the emotional wellbeing of their residents.

From there, we have partnered with Primary Health Networks and the Dept of Health to design psychological models across the health sector, as well as across industries with the focus on enhancing mental health literacy and developing social engagement and emotional wellbeing models. 

The challenge remains, with so few trained mental health clinicians, and the barriers to accessing treatment (cost, stigma, lack of awareness) to meet the demand for effective, sustainable and scalable interventions.

During the pandemic, what became apparent to us was that clients who had the opportunity to be active and participate in things that were personally meaningful to them, were protected from the negative mental health effects of the pandemic and in fact seemed to thrive. With this, Mood Mentors was born!

Mood Mentors is unique in that it is person-centred not activity- centred. Its purpose is to support people to engage in ways meaningful to them, that are consistent with their values. It has its roots in a long-established treatment for mental illness. 

Our Mood Mentors receive comprehensive training both in mental health recognition and responsiveness and in an accredited Mood Mentors training program. One of the significant benefits of our program is that it can be delivered by non-clinicians,  by anyone who receives the training and has an interest in emotional well-being.