Mental health gets an airing

By Melissa Meehan
MENTAL Health issues were on the agenda at Monday night’s council meeting.
Councillors voted to support work done by council staff to enhance mental health and wellbeing.
Cr Roz Blades said she was pleased that the council had reported on community mental health initiatives but said she would like to see the City of Greater Dandenong develop some tactics on how to deal with multiple nationalities and the mental health issues within different communities. .
“We have 156 nationalities in Greater Dandenong,” Cr Blades said. “We need to approach community groups and find ways of dealing with these problems.
“Some nationalities won’t go to the doctor, or call the council. There need to be other options.”
Cr Maria Sampey commended the council for preparing the report.
“We need to try and meet the needs of people with problems who don’t know where to go,” Cr Sampey said.
“Sometimes they isolate themselves. We need to work with these groups to find a way to get through to everyone.”
Community services director Mark Doubleday said the idea to incorporate tactics to deal with the multicultural aspects of the community were reasonable requests and would take the advice on notice for further discussion.