Volunteers have opened a "safe place" in a West Australian tourist town with the aim of taking on suicide prevention and the lack of non-hospital mental health services in the region.
A small, cosy room dubbed "the cocoon" now sits inside the remains of an old farmer's market in Busselton, two-and-a-half hours south of Perth.
Volunteers from the Busselton Community Safe Place have opened the area on Fridays from 5pm to 9pm for people to "drop in" if they would like someone to talk to.
Founding member Nyassha Anita says the space will be tailored to an individual's needs.
"If they're a bit stand-offish originally and don't want to talk, they can sit down and play a [board] game or something," Ms Anita said.
"If they really want to open up, we will offer, 'Do you want to come in for a private chat? Or are you happy just hanging out here and you just want somewhere to be?'"
"We know that there's [a long] waitlist for counselling, and sometimes the emergency department doesn't serve everybody, so we as community members put ourselves forward to try and offer something different to support people.
"It's a non-clinical alternative to suicide prevention, which basically means it's humans with a lived experience of hard times that are there to offer their support to other people."
Ms Anita says regional areas often have unique challenges when it comes to addressing suicide prevention.
"Depression and anxiety has massively increased; there's too high a demand for support and not enough services to provide that," she said.
"It leaves people in this awful limbo, feeling unsupported and like their problems aren't valid.
"There's no after-hours services anywhere in the South West; if you're in a crisis, the only option is to go to ED, and quite frankly to us, that wasn't good enough."
It is the second "safe place" the group has opened; the first is located in the centre of town and open on Saturday nights.
Personal experience key to offering support
Many of the volunteers at the safe place have had a personal experience of poor mental health, including Ms Anita.
"I suffered with suicidal ideation; I got in a mining accident and lost the use of my arm and very quickly lost a sense of myself, and really, really suffered in that time," she said.
"Knowing there's other people around that are in the same boat as you and there are places to turn, that alone I think really makes a huge difference to people.
"It saved my life."
Ms Anita said her own history of mental health challenges gave her the tools needed to help others.
"I went through feeling like I wasn't worthy, or I wasn't good enough, or I was a burden, and none of that is true," she said.
"I am a huge activist for empowering people to be vulnerable and not be so ashamed of their emotions."
She says the group's non-clinical approach is getting results, which inspires her to keep going.
"The happiness, the joy and the rawness of people showing up here and connecting is not like anything else I've seen," she said.
"It is an incredibly exciting journey."
