Dr Dougal Sutherland: Mental Health Awareness Week

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll know that we’ve just had Mental Health Awareness Week. It’s a great initiative by the Mental Health Foundation to normalise talking and thinking about mental health!  

Pop quiz – how many Kiwi adults do you think will, in their lifetime, experience a major mental health problem?  

According to Ministry of Health, it’s 47% of us.  

But data from the Dunedin Longitudinal Study suggests this figure might be closer to 80%. So that means most of us will experience some mental health problems in our lifetime – that shows it’s pretty normal!  

This year, Mental Health Awareness Week’s theme is Top Up Together – focusing on how to “top up” your mental health with others, which can help protect us against developing mental health problems. 

To top up our mental health we can use the 5 ways to wellbeing: Connect, Be Active, Take Notice, Keep Learning, and Give. I wanted to share some of my tips to top-up in each of the 5 areas:  

• Connect – very 3rd Thursday of the month me and a bunch of friends get together for “Thirsty Thursday” at our local. Some of us have a beer, some have a soft drink – it doesn’t matter. Sometimes there are 6 of us sometimes 16 – whoever can make it, makes it. We talk about everything from how to cook brisket to the state of cricket in NZ to what makes a “good” or “bad” person.  
• Be Active – try and make this an everyday habit. I go for a 45min walk every morning at 6am. It’s now so much of a habit that I need to do it otherwise I really notice it  
• Take Notice – I’ve just sparked up my mindfulness practice again  
• Keep Learning – I’ll use my lovely wife as an example here – she’s halfway through an online Te Reo course – she’s doing this together with others  
• Give – give time, or social support, or resources to help others – can be volunteering at your local soup kitchen or coaching your kid’s sports team or helping replant native bush. In a few weeks time I’ll be helping out at the St Michael’s church fair in Kelburn – giving some stuff and helping run the white elephant stall. Lots of research shows that the act of giving is just as helpful to the “giver” as to those receiving the help  

The challenge for listeners – how can you top up your mental health together with others. And check out www.mhaw.nz for more tips! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack Team podcast
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be We're learned something new on the show every week.
Doogle Sutherland from Umbrella well Being is known to most
of us as our clinical psychologist who joins us every
couple of weeks. But I didn't know this. He has
been poked and plodded as a subject of the infamous
Dunedin Longitudinal Study. How about that, Doogle? What an amazing thing.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Yeah, I'm trigued that you call it infamous. Well, yeah,
maybe famous, it was silly infamous for poking and proddingly. Yeah, no,
it's yeah. I'm one of those. Do you know? It
was so common in my class when I was at
school that it was just you know, it was one
of those things, Oh where's you know, where's Wayne today?
Oh he's at that Dunedin study thing. Oh yeah, I'm

(00:52):
going next week. So, just just because of the cohorts
saying we were, everybody at school was always you know,
when it came that time of every two years to
go into the study, it was just sort of half
to day somebody was absent from school.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Ask a really dumb question, is the d Need Longitudinal
Study were the subjects all in Dunedin.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Yes, that's good. Yeah, And I'll tell you another weird
little fact here. My grandmother was one of the original
volunteers that went around the writ around the maternity unit
Queen Mary and Dunedin and recruited mothers and their children.
Were predominant mothers and their kids to be in the study.

(01:32):
So we've got this weird family linkage back as well
when my grandmother was the person doing the recruiting. So wow. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Well, the reason I raised this is the Dnedan Longitudinal
Study and data from the study now suggests that the
number of New Zealand adults who in their lifetime experience
a major mental health problem could be as high as
eighty percent, which is an extraordinary figure. I mean, I
think the Ministry of Health says it's closer to fifty
percent or just under fifty percent, but eighty percent the

(02:00):
data from the Deneedan Longitudinal Study suggests it could be.
And giving it as Mental Health Awareness Week, which has
sort of been everywhere this week, it is. Yeah, it
is probably even more prominent.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah. Yeah, it's really interesting. When I'm talking to organizations
and groups of people, I often you know, start with
a pop quiz around you know, what percentage do you
of people in New Zealand do you think will have
experienced a major mental health problem in their lifetime? And
estimate's very wide, you know, wildly from thirty three percent.
You know, it's almost everybody, isn't it, depending on your definition. So,

(02:34):
but yeah, I think most people are sort of quite
blown away when it's eighty percent, and you know the
need data is from Dunedan study. Data is probably a
bit more better for one of a better term than
the Ministry of Health data because it's just more in
depth and so more likely to be accurate, I think.
But people typically now go, yeah, do you know what
I reckon? That's true? If it's if it's not me,

(02:56):
it's it's my partner, it's my mother, it's one of
my kids. And the idea really is that, you know,
mental health problems are not something weird that only a few,
you know, a small portion of people experience. It's pretty
much three quarters or almost all of us. And so
you know, the more that we can all do to
protect our mental health, the better, because you know it's

(03:17):
going to be somebody near to you. If not you
so so the more that we can do to talk
about it, to keep talking about it, to keep being
aware of it and preventing it, the better. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Absolutely, So you've got five tips for us this morning,
five ways to well being for kind of our mental health.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Yeah, and this picks up on the Mental Health Foundations,
you know, top up Together, which is their theme, has
been their theme for the week, and talking about the
five ways to well being, and the five ways to
well being are in brief, most people know these, but connect,
be active, take notice, keep learning, and give Now. They're
not just random either. There's quite a lot of research

(03:54):
behind those as five sort of key you know, key
things that you can do every every day or every
week or just you know, very regularly that will just
really bolster and boost up your mental health. So yeah,
so for me, my my favorite one of these is connect,
which is every third Thursday of the month, which is

(04:14):
a bit of a tongue twister. Every third Thursday of
the month and me and a group of friends get together,
we have Thirsty Thursday at our local and you know,
it's just after work and people drop in and you know,
some people have a beer and some people have a
you know, a soft drink, it doesn't doesn't really matter.
The idea is that hey, this is just a time
just to you know, catch up with each other, do

(04:36):
life with one another, see how you're going. And it's
just I just look forward to every month. It's just like, ah,
yes we got Thursday, Thursday this week, and it's just
it's just super good. And I think it's just you know,
where you can be in a space with people where
you can just be yourself and just be sort of
a real and just have good conversation. We don't always

(04:56):
agree about everything. We've got people from different political persuasions
and we even have an Australian in the group, so
that's you know, we're open to everybody. So yeah, so
that's connected. And I really love doing that. Yeah, being active.
Get up every day. I'm up at six, usually up
for a forty five minute walk, fifty minute walk or so,

(05:17):
which is I didn't used to love doing that. It's
been a habit that I have worked on and now
I'm at the point where if I don't do it,
I kind of really miss it, which is really good.
Taking notice this week has prompted me to sort of
start up and mindfulness practice again. I go on and
off mindfulness in terms of my practice of it, not

(05:39):
as a fan of it. So I'm just just gently
starting a bit more of mindfulness or returning to mindfulness
practice again, which is nice. Nice keep learning. Number four,
I use my wife for other than me as an example.
She's in the middle of a twenty week today O
course online and so every Tuesday night she shuts yourself

(06:00):
off into one of the one of the rooms and
practices today and it's all, you know, full of version today.
So it's just not allowed to speak English during that time.
I'm not allowed to interrupt her unless I'm going to
speak today, which I can't really do, so I don't
interrupt you. But again, that's it's that learning. That's it's
it's that really keeping those those brain cells active, and

(06:21):
it's keeping your mental well being at the forefront.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
So I think I feel like you're progressing too, don't you.
If you're learning, even if you're learning slowly, you still
feel like even if other parts of your life are
a bit in a bit of trouble, then you know,
you feel like you're progressing in one area something.

Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the thing, and it gives you
it gives us, gives often gives people that sense of
what we call mastery. So it might not be particularly
enjoyable at the time, but as you master the skills,
there is a real sense of pleasure or a sense
of achievement that people get out of that. It doesn't
have to be a language, obviously, it could be could
be anything, but I think that's it's that real sense

(06:57):
of pleasure and mastery that you get from from learning something.
And number five is give, give, Give, Give of give
your time, give your efforts, give your energies.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
Give your body to the longitudinal study.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, give you actually, do you know what? The last No,
not the last time, but two times ago when I
was down speaking of giving your body, Richie Pulton came
around and said, now we're just sort of we're just
floating the idea. We're just floating the idea just we
haven't decided on it yet, but would you think about
donating your body to the Dene study at the end
of your life? And it was like a very I was.

(07:38):
I was like, do you know what, maybe I maybe
I will, maybe I'll do that. Maybe that will be
a lasting, kind of lasting kind of gift for one
of a better term, but yeah, any way that you
can give. We know, there's lots of research that shows
that when people volunteer, particularly something completely unrelated to their
work or their life, it's really really good for the

(08:00):
person volunteering. So the more that you can give, again,
it's a boost for your mental well being. So yeah,
think about those five taps and about what you can
do individually over the next week, just just to just
you know, just to do at least one or two
of those bolster up and to bolstrup you will be.

Speaker 2 (08:18):
Oh so good. Thank you so much. Google.

Speaker 4 (08:21):
If you want to top it up yourself, you can
go to www dot m h a W. That's Mental
Health Awareness Week m h aw dot NZ. We'll make
sure there's a link to that on the news Talks
dB website as well.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame, listen live
to News Talks dB from nine am Saturday, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.