Social Practice graduate Sheree Veysey has helped many people with their mental health since leaving Unitec, including working on the National Depression Line and working in South Auckland as a social practice worker.
In her current role as Programme Manager of the Rethink team, she’s back at Unitec in November, offering Mental Distress workshops to any staff who are interested – the workshops are for staff in both academic and support roles. So far, more than 200 staff have attended, and the last four workshops are open for registration now.
Hear more about Sheree’s journey below, and sign up to a workshop, to learn more about supporting people experiencing mental distress.
Tell us about your experience studying at Unitec.
One of the things I enjoyed most about my student days was a paper in my masters on Spirituality and Social Practice. This was run by Ksenija Napan and involved us setting our own goals, assignments and then marking. I think regularly about the learning from this, and when I work
Another paper that stands out was my research methodologies paper run by Geoff Bridgman and Helen Gremillion. I loved the opportunity to engage with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and have walked away with an appreciation for the strengths and limitations of different angles of research. In an age when we get bombarded with so many viewpoints and “evidence” it is really key to be able to assess how people have supported their conclusions.
What did you do after graduating?
When I finished my postgraduate diploma in Counselling I worked for the National Depression line and spent time answering phone, text and email queries. I especially loved it when men would call and it was such a privilege to offer them warm supportive information when I was the first person they had ever trusted to open up to.
After completing my Masters I’ve done a range of things in the NGO sector, including working in South Auckland as a social practice worker, designing and running training and running my own small private counselling practice. I am currently the Programme Manager of the Rethink team at Mind and Body Consultants.
In the spirit of life long learning, what are you currently learning about?
I’m learning about intuition! It’s interesting as there doesn’t seem to be much good research about it (feel free to send me more!) but in my work with Rethink we talk about unconscious bias and being able to identify and address this. Intuition is thought to come from unconscious places as well; I’m interested in developing my skills in noticing, querying and deconstructing my intuition. My interest in this is really piqued by times when I will offer metaphors with counselling clients and find later that the metaphor created speaks directly to something happening in their lives. Using intuition safely and ethically and with awareness of unconscious bias- I think this is fascinating!
When it comes to mental health, what are the biases you see?
One of the things about life is that over the decades we all end up having our own struggles, and if you put an individual or family under another stress you end up seeing the symptoms of what gets called mental illness. One of the trickiest biases in mental health is this idea that there are “normal people” and then people with mental illness. People don’t want to be identified as part of an “out group” in terms of the mentally ill…
I think this bias is so damaging because it puts people in an out group and shames them. Then people that aren’t in that out group are often desperate to not have anything that sounds like mental health issues – when from my perspective, having challenges with our wellbeing are part of the human journey. Where we are on a spectrum of wellbeing, distress and stress is going to differ day-by-day and over months and years – yet often it is perceived that if you have received a mental health diagnosis you will always be unwell or vulnerable. This can hide the strengths and resilience of human beings!
This idea can also get in the way of people reaching out for support, stops us seeing the things we have in common with someone struggling with mental health symptoms and gets in the way of the compassionate interest that might allow us to find the ways to best be in their lives as colleagues, tutors, friends or support people.
Register for the ‘Mental Distress’ workshop
The workshop is run in two parts, so you need to choose a date for both parts. Use the registration form to choose your session times.
Dates are:
Part 1:
Monday 16 November, 9.00 – 11.30am at Mt Albert
Monday 16 November, 3.00 – 5.00pm at Mt Albert
Part 2:
Tuesday 24 November, 8.30am – 11.00am at Mt Albert
Tuesday 24 November, 11.30am – 2.00pm at Mt Albert