In the days after this tragic incident with Bondi, mental health professionals have mobilized. They are directly supporting and helping those affected. Leo Hede, the National Manager of Kids Helpline, emphasizes the importance of reaching out for help, particularly for young people aged 5 to 25. Kids Helpline operates a 24/7 phone and online counseling service. Through the Initiative, young people can call, text, or message trained counselors 24/7 wherever and whenever they need support.
This past year’s unprecedented demand for mental health care has been overwhelming. Dr. Anna Brooks, a psychologist and on-demand crisis support specialist, explained an alarming statistic. Lifeline Australia just had its all-time two busiest days of service, with more than 4,000 Australians reaching out for help on each day. This is more than a ten percent increase from the average volume so far this year.
Psychologist Dr. Tamara Malca Ben Shaul, a key member of the advisory teaching team, has some powerful wisdom to share. If you do start to feel overwhelmed for longer than five minutes, contact a licensed mental health professional immediately. She wants everyone to know that open communication and support from the community are key during challenging times such as these.
“Reach out to those around them, check in with others, see how they’re traveling, give them the opportunity to talk to you. Coming together as a community after a shocking, devastating event like this is a way that we can really add value to each other and come back together as a nation.” – Dr. Tamara Malca Ben Shaul
In direct response to the crisis, Bondi and Coogee have featured a mental health disaster response team, also known as the ‘Mental Health Avengers,’ on the ground. Our deep bench features expert mental health clinicians, standing by to assist you. We are open from 8 am to 8 pm to provide both short-term and long-term assistance.
Hede thinks parents have the biggest potential for impact by being their child’s greatest champion. One of the best ways to change that is through contacting Kids Helpline. He encourages all parents to reach out through the helpline. Next, they can hand the phone off to their children, letting them talk one-on-one with counselors. This approach helps ease the communication barrier between young people and the resources available to them.
“We’re taking more than 4,000 requests for support each day, and that’s more than ten percent higher than our average volumes of people seeking support across the course of this year.” – Dr. Anna Brooks
Alongside immediate support services, long-term mental health experts recommend limiting media exposure as a helpful coping method. Hede warns about over-consumption of news, particularly in this moment when the news is very fluid.
“It’s probably a really good idea to stay off social media and all those kind of channels and maybe decide on what period of time to engage with the news. The news changes every minute and there’s a lot of recapping all the time. And it just kind of feeds the nervous system with the information that this ongoing event is really actually happening at the moment.” – Leo Hede
Dr. Brooks speaks to that as well, advising people to cut themselves off from too much media if it’s making them feel anxious and inundated. She encourages everyone to remember that taking control of mental health is the first step to shaping and improving emotional health.
In different ways, both Hede and Dr. Ben Shaul emphasize the value of grounding techniques when working to diffuse anxiety sparked by troubling events. They encourage people to focus on each of their senses as a way to ground themselves in the present moment. By asking questions like “What am I seeing? What am I smelling? What am I hearing?” individuals can cultivate mindfulness and alleviate some of their distress.
Professor George Seber, a New Zealand based counseling and grieving expert, emphasizes the importance of giving yourself permission to mourn. Through his exploration of character, he strengthens the message that grief is a normal response to trauma and should be embraced instead of buried.
“It’s important to allow yourself to grieve.” – Professor George Seber
Seber goes more in depth on positive coping mechanisms that can help empower youth to navigate tough times. Instead, he promotes spending time with family members or working on a project for the community as productive ways to cope with emotional distress.
“That could be connecting to family, it could be connecting to other activities to community so that they can find ways to cope and manage. Often it is about helping them, staying off their phones, staying away from the media exposure, opening up and talking to their family, to the community about how they’re feeling.” – Dr. Tamara Malca Ben Shaul
No matter what caused the Bondi incident, for those directly impacted, timely support services can make a world of difference. Counselors have fielded chats and phone calls from families across Australia. These families were either on the forefront of seeing this event happen or suffering the effects in some other way.
“Immediately afterwards, we had a call from a mother and three young children who were at the beach during the event and need an immediate support. And then our counselors have also been supporting both parents and children and young across Australia with calls just to talk through and support them with the impacts of what’s been happening.” – Professor George Seber
