I am a person from five different ethnic backgrounds. They are Egyptian, Arabic, Greek, Italian and Australian. My family migrated to Australia in 1964. I live in Melbourne, am married and I have two teenage children.

I have been living with schizophrenia for almost 30 years now. My condition is currently very stable and I have a positive outlook on life. I am a qualified soccer coach and referee and I like to read a lot. I also enjoy gardening and having my family around me.

Coming from a background of five different cultures I possess some understanding in the differences that each culture has in the way they do things and especially the way they look at mental illness. Belief in oneself and others, belief in what constitutes a mental illness and belief in an assortment of treatments vary from culture to culture.

I grew up in an environment where you were expected to get better as quickly as possible and get on with life as soon as you can. Unfortunately this created some problems.

My multi-ethnic parents did not receive a lot of education, they relied heavily on superstitions and looked towards the religious leaders to facilitate my treatment. My family is part of the Greek Orthodox and Greek Coptic church. When I first started to show symptoms of my illness, my parents believed that I could get better through the power of prayer and faith rather than with specialist treatment.

The leaders of our church also played a big role in encouraging this and I was taken to a number of priests so that they could lay their hands on me and pray over me. My parents strongly believed that with time, patience and faith, I would recover.

One of the priests I went to was more favourable towards seeking specialist treatment and this played a big part in me getting the help I needed. Before this only a GP was being consulted and I was told that I had a nervous disorder and was given nervous tablets to get better. It became clear that this was not working. My specialist treatment did not result in instantaneous cure or recovery. I had to go back a number of times before the right diagnosis and treatment were given. There was not a lot of information about mental illness and working with people from different ethnic backgrounds.

Having appropriate information available would have taken a lot of the anxiety out of it for me and my family at the time.
It is my experience that the road to recovery was a lot easier when the right diagnosis is made and proper treatment is given, but you need someone to show you this.

Later in life, I developed a stronger personal acceptance of my condition and this also made a huge difference. I was lucky that I had good treatment and this meant that my symptoms were not so obvious. It also meant that I did not have to face the stigma from my communities because my treatment was successful and I played a big role in that and I wanted to get better.
I am very thankful that I am an Australian and that in Australia we at least have some mental health standards but they could be improved a lot more, especially to meet our cultural needs.

Australia is unique and life is good for most people. We have positives with negatives, advantages with disadvantages, and good and bad within our mental health system.

Just like I have seen the ups and downs through life, as I am sure you have envisaged similar dynamic or static changes. And this will continue into the future.

Mental illness activates behaviour visible or audible to the unique individual – something not accessible to the majority of the population. Therefore the significance of having diverse consumers participate in rectifying, improving, and advancing the Mental Health System, whether it be on a national, state or local level, cannot be understated.

We need a voice – or more precisely, a set of voices – the bigger the set, the better or easier to implement what originated in our great country of ours – advancing our Mental Health System for the ethnic communities to a compatible proportion.