Not Alone: Brain Pilot is a game-changer in mental health education

A game-changer in mental health will help young Aussies who turn to their mates, rather than adults, when they are struggling.

How many times have you carried the emotional load of a friend or loved one’s ‘stuff’? Depending on how heavy this ‘stuff’ is, it can really start to weigh on you and your mental wellbeing, despite your best efforts to compartmentalise and take care of yourself at the same time.

Mental health and suicide are not easy subjects to talk about, but news.com.au wants you to know you’re Not Alone. News.com.au’s Not Alone will raise awareness about these issues and provide you with the resources needed to reach out for help.

Now imagine carrying the same load as a 15-year-old who is also trying to find their sense of self in a really confusing world (and online space), while bending to social and academic pressure, all while the human body does the things it does during those formative years.

You might wonder why young people don’t just reach out to adults in their life to seek a helping hand. While some do, there are a number of reasons they don’t feel comfortable, or it doesn’t feel accessible or possible.

Research from the Queensland Family Child Commission continuously shows that the majority of young people seek help from each other before they seek help from any adult.

If you’re like me, you’ll find this problematic, simply because young people don’t actually know what they’re doing.

Young people are mostly likely to ask each other for help, but no one is supporting them to do that effectively.

No one is teaching them peer-to-peer mental health strategies and no one is supporting them after or during their ongoing and taxing efforts to pull their mates out of (or sit with them in) dark places.

This is where ALLKND swoops in to settle its very important puzzle piece in the Australian youth suicide prevention strategy.

We offer the only peer-to-peer, digital mental health first aid program, called Brain Pilot, for young people in Australia. This means we remain accessible to both metro and regional educational institutions, and meet young people in their native environment, keep them engaged and achieve lifesaving learning outcomes.

We built this wonderful program with developmental youth psychologist and Board Director, Amy Kate Isaacs from The Mindful Collective and the University of Queensland School of Psychology.

Through a mindful, compassionate lens, students are equipped with the knowledge and skills required to help a peer (or potentially themselves) in a time of need for mental health support — crisis or not. The program educates Aussie youth on topics including anxiety, panic attacks, self-harm, suicide, help-seeking, and general mental health literacy.

Since engagement is critical, our program and brand touchpoints are an experiential and personalised journey, framed on an in-flight narrative, as if the student were in (brain) pilot training.

If you’d like to be a better mate and undergo Brain Pilot Training, you can sign up here.

No one is teaching young people peer-to-peer mental health strategies.

In terms of supporting a mate — or even a stranger — through a mental health challenge or crises, it’s important to keep things simple, but still keep the following considerations in mind.

• Each individual is unique and therefore your support needs to be tailored for each individual’s needs. It’s actually more important to genuinely want to help, than to be of the same age, gender, sexuality or cultural background.

• Never make assumptions about the person’s sexuality or gender identity based on the way you think they should present.

ALLKND have developed a free app to help young people through difficult times.

• Support the person’s right to make any decisions about seeking cultural-based care. Most importantly, don’t be afraid to seek assistance from trained professionals, like helplines, crisis lines or practitioners.

• If you’re looking for something to help guide you through real-time mental health challenges or crises, (whether it’s you or a peer), you can and definitely should download our free app Mayday, that walks each user through our suicide prevention, panic attack and self-harm safety strategies in real-time.

We’re on a mission to #saveyounglives by educating one million and one young people in Australia by the end of 2025 with digital, peer-to-peer mental health first aid and reduce youth mental illness-related fatalities, one brave human at a time.