The impacts of Australia’s major disasters such as flooding, bushfires and drought have been all too clear to see. In recent years there has been loss of human life, destruction of homes, businesses and livestock, and widespread damage to the natural environment, not least to endangered wildlife such as koalas.
Less obvious, except to people who are close, are the impacts on those who have lived through these distressing events and witnessed the consequences. With an unmet demand for psychological services, many communities, families and individuals struggle to properly recover, with post-event life being especially difficult for young people to process.
As 2002 Churchill Trust Fellow Garry King says, ‘There was a 40 per cent increase in self-harming behaviours amongst school children across Victoria following the start of COVID-19.’
And as Garry notes, ‘Self harm is clearly identified in research as a significant risk factor for later suicidal behaviour.’
Having worked extensively with young people as a teacher, youth worker and counsellor, and holding qualifications in welfare and education as well as Master’s degrees in counselling and suicidology, Garry undertook further research in the USA around youth suicide prevention programmes in an educational context.
Later, he has worked as the youth welfare consultant for the Australian Institute for Suicide Research Prevention and was appointed an adjunct senior lecturer at Griffith University, Queensland, a role he continues to hold.
Garry has presented to numerous professional conferences in Australia and overseas, and has written and co-authored a range of publications, including What Every Parent Should Know about their Child and Self Injury, School Crisis Prevention & Intervention, which has been released in the USA, and a chapter on the all-important topic of youth suicide for School Social Work: Practice, Policy, and Research, now in its ninth edition.
He has established and administers an active LinkedIn group and a Facebook page, Non-Suicidal Self Injury, aimed at assisting parents concerned about their children’s wellbeing. This valuable early intervention tool now has over 2500 followers.
In 2022, Garry King became a recipient of a Churchill Trust Fellow Impact Funding Grant, an initiative aimed at enhancing the outcomes of identified Churchill Fellowships. His expressed aim was to share the knowledge and skills to minimise the potential for young people to self-harm in locations impacted markedly by natural disaster.
To do this, Garry facilitated two workshops for professionals in centres especially hard hit by the unprecedented floods of early 2022. The chosen towns were Gympie in south-east Queensland and Lismore in the NSW Northern Rivers. Both regions had been decimated by the floodwaters and to this day are on recovery journeys costly in both personal and economic terms.
‘These workshops focused on non-suicidal self-injury,’ Garry explains, ‘drawing on recent research highlighting an increase in self-harming behaviour following disaster events. The aim was to provide free evidence-based training in self-harm to people who work with youth in areas impacted by natural disasters.’
Initially, it was hoped that parents would attend a second set of tailored workshops, but these were cancelled due to low engagement rates. Garry found there is ‘a significant challenge in getting information into communities in disaster affected areas without developing fear amongst residents’.
Garry adds, ‘All preparation, presentation and evaluation was free of charge, and the work on collating and analysing information was completed at no charge.’
He says there is an eagerness for training from staff who work with youth in disaster affected areas.
‘The sad fact is that traumatic events such as natural disasters can have an intense psychological impact. This comes as a great shock, especially to young people, and it is important to act quickly to support them before they turn to self-harming, or worse, suicidal ideation.’