By CHERIE TAYLOR IN ROTORUA
After successfully battling his own demons Gavin Pike is taking his job supporting other people struggling with mental illness to a new level.
After years in and out of Rotorua Hospital's mental health unit, the 39-year-old set up Mana Mental Health Services four
years ago. It is an advocacy service for tangata-whai-ora (people suffering with mental illness).
On Friday, his organisation launched a new peer support service after being contracted on a two-year pilot project by the Lakes District Health Board.
The aim of the project was to help sufferers regain independence and destroy the stigma attached to mental illness, Mr Pike said.
The agency has employed four workers for the six day per week pilot - three previous clients of mental health services and an administration worker.
"We will come from our own experiences supporting other people in the same boat we were once in, on their journey to wellness," he said.
"Who else better to support them than someone who has been there and knows where they are coming from?
"I know I have come a long way in the past 10 years."
While there were about 30 mental health service providers in the Lakes District, the new service would complement them.
"This is a positive move giving consumers of mental health services more opportunities to help. Whilst the journeys are different they are similar in that there is an understanding around their unwellness and that hope of gaining wellness," Mr Pike said.
Clients will be visited in their own homes by the support workers.
From his own experience as a client, Mr Pike said it was important that people suffering from a mental illness were heard.
"All I wanted was to have a support worker just listen to what I was going through rather [than] just be medicated. There is a place for medication but people need to be given the chance to be heard." The service will originally only be offered to people within the Rotorua area, eventually rolling out to reach all within the Lakes District Health Board region.
Mr Pike also released a recording of tracks related to his personal journey to wellness at the launch.
