On Wednesday, April 26, he brought that message to Benalla part-way through a 1440km walk around the state where he is speaking to local emergency services about mental health care.
Mr Pearce is a member of the Emergency Services Foundation (ESF) and Inspector-General for Emergency Management in Victoria.
He arrived in Benalla early afternoon where he spoke to emergency services personnel at the Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action (DEECA) on Sydney Rd.
He then met with more emergency services members, including local police, at the Victoria State Emergency Services training evening at its shed on Samaria Rd.
Following that Mr Pearce gave a presentation to the community at Benalla Bowls Club.
“I’m walking a long way,” he told emergency members in Benalla.
“I wanted to do this to raise greater awareness through the community, and through our sector, about the mental health impacts of the work that we do. And how that can be so debilitating.
“(There was a) Beyond Blue study in 2018 called answering the call.
“That was the first, and only national survey they have done of 21,000 emergency service workers, paid and volunteers about their mental health.
“And when you look at that it paints a really ugly picture.
“I’ve got no doubt in my mind, even today, five years on we probably haven’t moved that much further.
“And when I say that I don’t mean that agencies aren’t doing a lot of things, and the government isn’t doing a lot of things.
“They’ve had the Mental Health Royal Commission and thrown lots of money at that.
“But all of that is (after) people are getting really sick.
“So once you’re clinically diagnosed, perhaps you’ve got PTSD or are suffering some other really debilitating degree of mental injury — then there’s lots of things to help you.
“But early in your career you might have been rolling along quite nicely then all of a sudden you’re starting to feel unhappy and things aren’t going well and you can’t understand why that is.
“You’re getting up every day feeling bad. That is the area we have an interest in as a foundation.
“I strongly believe that if you can provide people with some assistance, resources and also some capacity to understand what’s going on within them, they will be better able to manage themselves.
“And they’re also better able to recognise when they maybe need to take a much bigger step, rather than just sitting back monitoring what’s going on.
“All of the programs we do in the foundation are all about trying to help people into a place where they can understand why they are feeling the way they do.
“And we’re teaching leaders how to recognise (mental health issues) in their people so they can assist them to step up and ask for a bit of help.”
Funds raised from Tony’s Trek will be used to enable ESF to deliver pioneering prevention-focused mental health initiatives — a Lived Experience Program and Pilot Residential Wellbeing Program.
ESF is entirely dedicated to the prevention of mental health injury for Victoria’s emergency workers. It works with the support of 14-member agencies.
Find out more at esf.com.au/
If you or someone you know is experiencing issues around mental health you can contact Accessline on 1800 800 944, Lifeline Australia on 13 11 14, Beyond Blue on 1300 224 636 or Kids Helpline on 1800 551 800.
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