Nova Marmion is dedicated to suicide prevention, a staff member at Safe Haven Belconnen, a free walk-in, after-hours centre.
Safe Haven is where people as young as 16 who are in distress or having suicidal thoughts can go to find help.
Nova understands what they're going through. All the staff have lived experience of mental health issues.
"We're there as a non-clinical option just to support people through those times of distress," she said.
"Sometimes people only need to vent and to chat about it. Sometimes it's safety planning, figuring out new coping skills, refreshing old ones.
"We do a lot of referrals to other services and sometimes it does come to the point where we have to contact emergency services where they are at a level of risk where they cannot stay safe."
Nova, 28, was among 11 award winners at the 2024 Mental Health Month Awards presented in Canberra on Wednesday.
The awards honour individuals and organisations who have worked to improve mental health and wellbeing in the ACT.
Nova received the Community Connection Through Recovery Award, for showing "exceptional leadership and advocacy in mental health and suicide prevention".
It was "lovely" to be recognised.
"I've had a tumultuous early 20s, teenage years. A lot of complex mental health stuff. But I've really put in a lot of hard yards to recover," she said.
A social work student at the Australian Catholic University in Watson, Nova is doing honours research on suicide prevention, using data from past coronial inquests.
It was an "untapped resource", she said.
"Coronial data is a really great resource for seeing commonalities in suicide cases, seeing missed opportunities for support, intervention. And we're looking at what we might not already know about these cases and what we can learn from them," she said.
"And, a lot of times, coroners will leave recommendations at the end of the documents and there's no real pressure for the responding organisations to respond to those officially. That's maybe a gap we're exploring in the research."
The 2024 award winners were:
- Innovative Person-Centred Supports Award: Vendra Begonja
- Leadership Through Lived Experience Award (Consumer): Beth Garwood
- Mental Health Carers Award: Dalanglin Dkhar
- Mentally Healthy Community Award (Group): Mental Illness Education ACT Volunteer Group
-
Mentally Healthy Community Award (Individual): Ravi Krishnamurthy
- ACT Mental Health Consumer Network Scholarship: Julia Bocking
- Lived Experience Ally Recognition Award (Group): ACT Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Suicide Prevention and Mental Health Partnership Group
- Lived Experience Ally Recognition Award (Individual): Catherine Vonarx
- David Perrin Award: Amy Warner
- Consumer Small Business Grant: Felicity Maher
- Community Connection Through Recovery Award: Nova Marmion
Mental Health Month 2024 is held every October in the ACT. This year's theme is "Connected Canberra".
Mental Health Community Coalition of the ACT chair Yvonne Luxford said it was proud to recognise the contributions of the award winners.
"Their dedication to improving mental health in Canberra and beyond is both inspiring and essential to the wellbeing of so many individuals," she said.
The award ceremony was presented by the ACT Mental Health Consumer Network, the Mental Health Community Coalition ACT and the Mental Health Carers Voice.
