10 minute read

Mind Australia held its second annual Stratford Lecture at Parliament House, Sydney, a setting in which the voices and perspectives of people with lived experience of mental health challenges have not sufficiently been heard or valued. Watch the Stratford Lecture on YouTube.

Katie Larsen, Mind’s Executive Director Lived Experience, said this was a deliberate choice.

“A big part of the challenge of creating a lived experience led mental health system is bringing our voices into existing power structures to enable change,” she said.

The event did just that, bringing a breadth of lived experience voices and perspectives to a diverse NSW audience. 

The 2025 Stratford Lecture was delivered by Lived Experience researcher, Helena Roennfeldt. Helena’s own experience of crisis and psychiatric facilities has been the catalyst for her interest in the personal meanings of mental health crises. Her research aims to foreground the voices of people who have experienced crisis in understanding and responding to crisis.

“Traditional crisis care threatens to medicalise our distress and become places of containment. Yet, alternative options for crisis care are limited. I want us to consider how we can respond to crisis through the lens of lived experience to humanise crisis,” Helena said.

The Stratford Lecture event also included a presentation by the recipient of the 2024 Stratford Scholarship, Mush McLoughlan, and the announcement of the recipients of the 2025 Stratford Scholarship, KJ Hepworth and Tabitha Lean.

We created the Stratford Lecture and Scholarship as a national event… to generate ideas and action informed by lived experience leadership that will drive system transformation.
- Gill Callister PSM, Chief Executive Officer, Mind Australia

Mush’s spoken and video presentation showcased her ‘Deathsongs’ event, part of her work as a person with lived experience to depathologise suicidality and envision non-medicalised responses to it. 

The Lecture also featured a panel discussion of guest speakers:

  • Scarlett Franks – Survivor Researcher & Advocate at The University of Sydney
  • Giancarlo de Vera – CEO of Being
  • Marnie Tuala – CEO, First Nations Co
  • Helena Roennfeldt.

The panel discussion provided a broad range of perspectives and insights into questions from Katie and the audience including:

  • What role can community based peer responses can play in supporting people in crisis or in offsetting crisis?
  • What can we learn from First Nations perspectives in terms of social and emotional wellbeing? 
  • How are we going to achieve a lived experience led mental health system, given all the challenges we face?

Introducing the event, Mind CEO Gill Callister described it as so much more than a memorial to the lived experience pioneer Anthony Stratford, after who it was named.

“We created the Stratford Lecture and Scholarship as a national event… to generate ideas and action informed by lived experience leadership that will drive system transformation.

“The mental health system is in crisis… but hospitals, emergency departments, psychologists and psychiatry are not the solution. They are a small part of what we know people need to have choice and purpose in life, to live a life that they choose, not one they are forced into.

“A true community and lived experience centred system is a big part of the way forward, for prevention, for early intervention, and for recovery and healing.”

The Mind Stratford Lecture was held in conjunction with the One Door Mental Health Symposium.