Making a castle out of a grain of sand.

Put enough grains of sand together and you'll get a castle, a castle that supports itself. Each grain of sand only needs to accept a small amount of support, and provide a small amount of support, and the castle stands tall. However, if the sand sits around waiting until a kid with a bucket comes along to make it into a castle, then building the castle becomes a daunting and impossible task. Even if someone spends a lot of money, and sends down a lot of kids, with a lot of fancy buckets, the majority of the sand still won't find the support that it needs. Let's be honest, there is not enough kids on the beach now, and there will never be enough kids on the beach. It takes all the sand to make the castle strong, and waiting on the kid and the bucket, will never make the sand into a castle.

Our community is like a giant beach and the people with mental illness are like a bucket of sand that has been thrown into the wind. The mental health system is just like a couple of kids, armed with a bucket and a spade, wondering up and down trying to make a castle that can support the whole beach. Only a tiny amount of sand ever finds the kid with the bucket, and the kid with the bucket will never find the grains of sand that were thrown into the wind. The current mental health system is as effective as a kid with a bucket.

The cost of mental illness to the community is estimated at $1.85 billion dollars annually (McGorry, 2004), $1.85 billion dollars buys a lot of buckets. Therefore, a lot of money is being spent, a lot of buckets are being bought, and yet very few people are getting the support that they need. This is because the federal and state government's current strategy of building support networks is not working. Currently, there is a few kids with buckets and a couple of government agencies throwing buckets from a passing car. These guys don't even stop to look at the beach.

It doesn't matter how much you spend on the buckets, or how carefully you think you throw them, this is never going to work. I don't care how many kids are sent out, or how many buckets you throw.

It's like this every time I go to a mental health focus group or I talk to teachers and educators they all say the same things “We don't have enough resources or money” “there's no social workers or psychiatrists available”. “There's not enough kids on the beach with a bucket” but by god there's a lot of sand.

Grains of sand are just as they seem, they are grains of sand, and yet they can support each other across the entire beach. Each individual grain of sand simply supports the other sand around it. Now like the sand we all have the capacity to support everyone around us and we all live on the same beach. But unlike the grains of sand we are people, therefore we have the capacity to learn and whether we are conscious of it or not, the resources that we need to support everyone in the community are already here. The most valuable resource that we have, are the members of our community, that is you and me.

We can learn the skills that we need to support the other people around us and we can build our own castle. Our own castle that supports itself, our own castle where every individual supports the individuals around them and our own castle that gives us the support that we need. The foundations of the castle are built on every individual that it consists of.

So how about we move away from the buckets and we start to teach the sand how to support itself. Instead of a federal mental health system or a state mental health system how about we invest in establishing the worlds first - Community mental health system.

The community mental health system has infinite resources, it has as many resources as there are grains of sand. But most importantly all the resources that the community mental health system needs, are already here. And all the support that you need is already here because it exists in the people around you. The community mental health system is never short of Doctors or mental health professionals or hospitals beds, or kids with buckets, because the community mental health system doesn't rely on these things for support. The community mental health system doesn't sit back and wait for someone to make it into a castle, because, the community mental health system is the castle.

In the community mental health system there are always plenty of resources to fund all of the projects, because, the community mental health system is the resource.

Lets look at the statistics. 1 in 4 people suffer from a mental illness at some point in their lives and I'm fairly certain that every person in the world person knows at least 3 other people. Therefore, just by the numbers, for every person with a mental illness there is at least three people in the community that can support them. And, perhaps more importantly, everyone knows someone with a mental illness who they can support. So, why is it, that with all this support available, so few people get the support they need.

Very few people get the support they need because we are waiting for the kid with the bucket, or in most cases are completely reliant on the kid with the bucket, because that's the only way we see that the castle can be built. But as the statistics have demonstrated, there is an overwhelming amount of support already out there. All we need to do is exercise the support that already exists. We have the power to build a castle of support, a castle that supports itself.

We need to bring the support networks down from the Doctors and hospitals and mental health systems and stop relying on the kids and the buckets. We need to bring the support back to the individual and the community.

We need a community wide education program that will equip every person with any additional skills and knowledge that they require to provide the help and support that everybody needs.

By doing this we can bring the community together, we can give a little support and receive a little support, and we can truly build a castle out of the grains of sand.

This is the premise behind people like you. It's about all of us, working together, sharing experiences and building our own castle. We must stop waiting for a kid with a bucket, and we must start working together to build our own castle, and it starts with every grain of sand.

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Reference:

McGorry, P. 2005. Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of schizophrenia and related disorders. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry. 39:1-30.