Rick Corney's work and his life are inextricably entwined. For some of us, to be unable to separate work and life may seem a burden; for others it's a very happy, sought -after lifestyle.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
But for Rick, there's no choice as to whether the two can be parted. As someone who's lived through a mental health episode and survived, he now works with Ballarat Community Health and Grampians Community Health providing peer services to others who need support in their lives.
His role with the Connecting2community psychological support service, he says, is to act as a kind of 'icebreaker' to connect a person with a mental health problem back to their community.
He is adamant his role in the regional peer workforce community enables him to create opportunities for shaping people's futures, whether it is through his presence on committees or in governance and advisory groups, or simply talking to someone.
Rick Corney has also provided a statement about his life's experiences to the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System, and it is now publicly available.
It should be mandatory reading. Not just for anyone wishing to understand how mental illness can blight someone's life, but for all Australians, whether they have an understanding of how breakdowns can happen and what it takes to rebuild, or not.
It's a visceral account of the breakdown and rebuilding of his life, assisted by the compassionate intervention of police and the extraordinary contribution made by his local cricket club to helping rebuild Rick's life.
In his statement, he details how he first became ill at the age of 28: almost overnight, he writes.
"One night I had a fight with my housemate," Rick writes.
"I had become fascinated with numbers and was dialling 000 and was unaware that the police were driving past the house. My housemate became aware of the police and he held a knife to my throat and I fled. I'd had a car accident a couple of weeks earlier and didn't have a car so I found myself starting to walk to my mum's house, over 170 kilometres away from where I lived, to get to safety.
"Police found me walking over the West Gate Bridge. I was arrested, assessed and taken to a psychiatric hospital as an involuntary patient. I was then assessed by a doctor. It was funny because the first thing he asked me was 'was I hearing voices?' I just thought it was a really odd question - I said 'Yeah I am. I'm hearing your voice and my voice.'"
Shortly after, Rick was forcibly detained, chemically restrained, and placed into isolation for several weeks. It was, he says, his introduction to the roundabout of the mental health system in Victoria. He was released back into the care of the person who attacked him initially, then entered the terrifying spiral of fleeing, being arrested, placed back into psychiatric care, and released again, this time into his mother's care..
"In two years I was hospitalised involuntarily several times, including at the acute unit of my local area mental health service," Rick says.
"My memory from that period is vague as I was on so much medication, so some things are a blur. At the time I feel I lacked insight to my illness... II was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1998. It was devastating. I didn't understand the illness. My perception of people living with schizophrenia was they were the people on the evening news, naked in the street waving a machete and being shot by police. I thought my diagnosis meant that I had turned into someone homicidal with no future."
Living in isolation, Rick's thoughts turned to self-harm. Facing electroconvulsive therapy, Rick credits his mother's intervention, Wimmera Uniting Care and a local police officer with saving him.
The police officer approached a local cricket side to let them know that Rick, in his words, wasn't 'travelling too well'.
In short time the club members were picking Rick up from home each weekend to take him to matches. he ended up working behind the club's bar, and at the same time began to recover his self-confidence.
"At the cricket club, I was the face of what mental illness looked like, but eventually I was also the face of what recovery looked like," Rick says.
"In my view, the stigma I experienced in the early times came from people not understanding mental illness. I didn't understand mental illness either. However, the cricket club has taken their learning out of my experience which has helped raise awareness. It has been really powerful."
Determined to re-enter the workforce, Rick decided to undertake a Cert IV course in mental health studies at Federation University in Ballarat. He took an initial job at Wimmera Uniting Care in Horsham, and is now at Ballarat Community Health.
"It's like working with a family who've been through similar things together," Rick says of his work.
If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.
