Tyreese Toohey, 17, was recently nominated for the Young Courage Award through the Embassy of Sweden in Canberra for his work raising awareness of the lack of youth mental health services in rural areas.
The award celebrates young people who have demonstrated remarkable moral courage and honours Swedish architect Raoul Wallenberg, who demonstrated extraordinary bravery during World War II by saving tens of thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.
While Tyreese did not win the award, simply being nominated was a huge honour, and he was both “shocked” and “grateful” to receive the nomination.
“I was proud of myself, my mum was proud of me, and we went out for dinner to celebrate,” he said.
Tyreese’s advocacy for rural mental health began when a teacher at Cobram Secondary College put him forward for the Rural Youth Ambassador program, which brings together rural students to identify issues affecting their schools and communities.
Representatives from the Victorian Government also attended the program to hear the students’ ideas and give them an opportunity to have their say.
Tyreese chose to focus on mental health, working with other students to explore how support could be made more accessible to young people in rural areas.
“I had experience with mental health in my own life, but I had never really thought about it on a broader scale,” he said.
“We talked about how we could improve wellbeing in our schools and how we could break down that stigma around what mental health is like in these areas.”
Having been diagnosed with anxiety and experienced his own struggles with mental health, Tyreese wants other young people to feel comfortable asking for help.
“You’d go to the doctor with a cough or cold, and you’re not embarrassed, but some people are embarrassed to talk about mental health,” he said.
Tyreese said the Rural Youth Ambassador program had given him greater confidence and a clearer direction for his advocacy work, something he hoped to continue after graduating.
He plans to study a Bachelor of Biomedical Science before pursuing further study in physics and imaging techniques, with the goal of exploring how medical imaging could contribute to the diagnosis and understanding of mental health conditions.
“We can look at imaging techniques, and neural physics in the brain, and we can identify biomarkers for mental health in the microcircuits,” he said.
“Obviously, mental health is really complex, but if we see this on imaging, then it can speed up the process of diagnosing people.”
Tyreese also wants to renew his mental health first aid training and visit regional schools to speak with students about what to do when they or a friend is struggling.
“You don’t need to be someone’s therapist; you can just be there for them,” he said.
“It’s something that no-one ever really teaches you how to maintain those social dynamics with people and how to not make it awkward.”
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