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Been There — Why Struggling Service Members Trust a Survivor Over a Brochure

Lived Experience in Mental Health Support: Why serving members and families turn to survivors before services

Dana Gambrill interviewed serving members and their families around Australia for the Defence Force's Joint Health Command, to find out why they were not using the mental health services provided to them. What he found was simple: someone under strain wants to talk first to a person who has faced the same trouble and come through it, not a 25-year-old graduate or a brochure from the intranet. He built that finding into Paper Kite, where mentors who have lived through their own challenges sit with people across eight areas of life. He explains why lived experience opens conversations that qualifications alone cannot, and how workplaces and services can put survivors at the front of their support. Listeners leave knowing why the first conversation matters most, and who should have it.

About Dana Gambrill

Dana Gambrill, podcast guest

Founder

Founder Paper Kite Wellness CollectiveNavigating Human 8-area life lens mentoring programADF Joint Health Command mental health workEx-IT executive Smart cities, DXC and IBM Consulting

Dana Gambrill is the founder of Paper Kite Wellness Collective and Paper Kite People, based in Canberra, Australia. Paper Kite helps people build the stamina to handle everyday life and the resilience to rise when things go wrong, working with them before they break rather than as a clinical service.

Before Paper Kite, Dana was an IT executive who applied technology to real-world outcomes, including smart cities work and consulting with DXC Technology and IBM Consulting. Much of that work was in the military space. With the Australian Defence Force's Joint Health Command he looked at why serving members and their families were not using the mental health services provided to them, and found that people want to speak to someone who has been through it. He also spoke before Australia's Royal Commission on defence and veteran suicide, on the high-risk window from the moment someone knows they will leave military service to 12 to 18 months after they leave.

At Paper Kite, Dana developed Navigating Human, a life lens program across eight areas of life, such as fitness, sleep and nutrition, in which mentors who have come through their own challenges help people see which parts of life are working and which are not.

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