Whole community to benefit from men’s mental health hub opening in Busselton

Busselton will be home to a men’s mental health hub, aimed at providing a number of services for men’s wellbeing in one place. The hub — named Kaartdijin Blue Mind Place — will offer peer support groups, educational workshops, wellbeing programs and referrals for other services. Busselton will be the regional centre for the project after it was identified as already having a number of separate services operating in the city. It will be open two days a week, on Saturdays and Sundays. The hub will be located at the Busselton Community and Youth Centre and will be run by Mens Talk with funding coming from the WA Mental Health Commission. Mens Talk president Paul Litwin said the facility would be an exciting chance to make change in the regions. “Our motto is ‘healthy men, healthy community’ because without healthy men you are not going to have healthy communities,” he said. “We can see that already happening now with the FDV issues, (and) with other issues and struggles that men are having with disconnect, with loneliness, not being a part of community, it all has a compacting issue.” The South West city will be one of two locations in the 18-month pilot program with Scarborough being home to the metropolitan hub. They will both be the subject of research being undertaken by Curtin University to determine the impact of the program. Mr Litwin said he hoped the services would be successful case studies and spur on a Statewide expansion. “Curtin University is going to be conducting some research to see how effective these hubs are, what are the interactions with the community, how do men interact, what are they interacting with in these hubs,” he said. “We will then have significant data at the end of the 18 months to then go back to the Mental Health Commission and say, ’OK, this is what the hubs have done’.” A community day will be held on the afternoon of June 9 at the Busselton Community and Youth Centre on the foreshore.