Host Suresh Prabhakaran, President Margaret Brede, Guest Speaker Rahul Seth
Rahul Seth is the founder of Activate Mental Health, Perth’s largest mental well being group.
Mental health is currently WA’s biggest community concern.
Rahul described how he was born in Switzerland, and went to primary and high school here, where he was heavily bullied.
In high school he discovered he had a natural affinity with numbers which led to his becoming a qualified chartered accountant. In 2008, he took a job as an auditor, but he was struggling with his mental health. Rahul said that his biggest mistake at that time was not joining any social groups.
He consulted a psychologist who diagnosed depression, and later bipolar.
Rahul was advised to reach out to social groups, and he played tennis for 10 years while working as a financial manager. But in 2015, he wanted to go back to Switzerland to visit and on his return, decided to switch to helping people through employment services.
He also knew that he wanted to create a mental health support group, primarily for people aged 25-45, because once diagnosed and stabilised, there was nowhere for those people to go.
Rahul pitched his idea to the Victoria Park Neighbourhood Community Scheme. He was given a grant to found the Perth Active Depression Support Group. A safe space for socialising and playing board games in the Victoria Park Community Centre was established.
Over 10 years, member numbers have increased to 8500. The pyramid steps of AMH are self actualisation, self esteem, belonging, safety and physiological well being. Many mental health groups offer safety and well being but AMH offers the next step of the pyramid – belonging – which in turn leads to self esteem and self actualisation.
Now AMH volunteers lead coffee clubs which meet every two weeks, play board games every fourth Saturday, and hold a Silent Book Club (a great concept which host member Suresh thoroughly endorsed), walking groups, bouldering, volunteering opportunities and arts and crafts.
Rahul has a vision where AMH will grow to enable him to hire staff to market the work his organisation does and have the capacity to reach out to even more people.
He says that one of the biggest highlights of his mental health support work was receiving the WA Volunteer of the Year award from Volunteering WA in 2023. But more importantly, it’s the friendships he has made, and seeing people with all sorts of problems grow in confidence and happiness from the connections they make within the group.