Redefining Mental Health Through Culture, Connection, and Gratitude with Nyachan Nyak

From refugee camps to founding a culturally responsive recovery centre, Nyachan Nyak on what real mental health looks like

TL;DR

• Chasing perfect mental health can make people who are doing okay feel like they're not. Take stock of where you actually are.
• If you're on a waitlist for drug, alcohol or mental health support, lean on your people, reduce harm and keep the process going.
• Journalling, scheduling and reviewing your goals turn a busy head into a clear plan.
• Surround yourself with people whose values you admire, and ask them to mentor you.

Introduction

Nyachan Nyak is South Sudanese and lived in refugee camps until she was 11, before coming to Australia. She has wonderful memories of those camps: people supporting each other, living in the moment, improvising and not whingeing. Her biggest lesson from that time was how gratitude can change everything.

She moved out at 16, worked hard and kept bettering herself. She worked in aged care for about six years, in disability support and in retail, then studied a diploma of health science, a bachelor's degree in community mental health and drug and alcohol, and a master's in mental health. Along the way, she noticed that her community wasn't being represented. In 2023, she launched the Nas Recovery Centre, where she's the founder and CEO. She's also a mum of three.

We talked about the myth of perfect mental health, what people can do while waiting for help, journalling, mentors and rejection.

This is general information, not medical advice. If you're struggling, speak to your GP. If you need support right now, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. In an emergency, call 000.

Lesson 1: Stop chasing perfect mental health

Insight: Nyachan's first observation surprised me. She finds people are so obsessed with having good mental health that they forget they might already have it. Full, perfect mental health would need everything to go right, from government and interest rates to the weather and every relationship in your life. Most of that is out of our control.

If you have a bed, food, reasonable health and one or two good relationships, she says you're okay. You can always improve, but you're not broken. Her concern is that when everyone chases the same picture, the people who are genuinely struggling get lost in the shadow and miss out on support.

Action: Take a step back and list what's actually going well: a roof over your head, food, health and the people you can talk to.

Outcome: You see where you really are, rather than measuring yourself against an impossible standard.

Lesson 2: Make decisions you won't regret

Insight: Nyachan describes herself as very conscious about her choices: where she lives, who she talks to and what she consumes. She traces it back to the refugee camps, where nothing was abundant and everything had to be rationed and planned, down to when you washed your one outfit before church. She calls it a trauma response that has worked in her favour.

That doesn't mean she never makes mistakes or never chooses to be careless. It means she owns her choices. If she does something careless, it's because she decided life is too short or that's what she needed. Either way, she doesn't sit back and regret it.

Action: Before your next big decision, pause and ask yourself whether you'll stand by it whatever happens.

Outcome: You make choices you can own, rather than ones you complain about later.

Lesson 3: Support doesn't have to start in an office

Insight: During her studies and placements, Nyachan began doing outreach with people experiencing homelessness and addiction. During COVID, she rang organisations and asked what they were doing for people who weren't getting vaccinated. Thanks to her retail skills, she rarely got off the phone without what she needed. Nurses who didn't usually do outreach set up vaccination stations where people actually were.

To get the centre started, she wrote her first-ever grant application over two nights in a hotel, staying up all night to submit it. It was accepted. Two and a half years later, the centre runs counselling, case management, outreach, support groups and training. Nyachan is also a suicide prevention trainer. The outreach model still works because shame, stigma and practical barriers stop many people from walking into an office. So the team goes to them with food and gift bags, talks to people and leaves their numbers. She's seen people go from that first conversation to rehab and turn their lives around 12 months later.

Action: If you know someone who's struggling, go to them rather than waiting for them to come to you. A visit, a meal or a message can open the door.

Outcome: You remove one of the biggest barriers to someone asking for help.

Lesson 4: What to do while you're waiting for help

Insight: Nyachan sees addiction as a response to unaddressed issues: mental health, social isolation, unemployment, racism, discrimination, poor relationships and overwhelmed parents. People use substances to numb and cope. She said that if she were in their situation, she'd do exactly the same.

One of her biggest frustrations is waitlists. Someone is finally ready to stop drinking and is told it'll be six months, and in the meantime the problem becomes chronic. Her suggestions for that waiting period:

• Use your support system. Ask a partner or family member to help, for example by keeping drinks locked away while you cut back.
• Find other things to do. Exercise and hobbies help, even if they take effort at first.
• Look for bridging support. Some services can teach coping strategies and help you reduce your use safely while you wait, with your GP's support.
• Reduce harm. Don't mix drugs and know what you're taking. The first goal is to stay alive.
• Start the process anyway. Speak to your GP, as some waits are shorter than you'd expect.

To family members, her message was simple: give people another chance. People can change. If they couldn't, all these services wouldn't exist.

Action: If someone close to you says they're ready to change, ask them how you can help, even if you've heard it before.

Outcome: You could be the support that gets them through the wait.

Lesson 5: Write it down

Insight: Nyachan has a lot of dialogue running in her head, so she writes everything down. She learned reflective journalling as part of her studies, and it became her one real system. Everything that needs action goes into her calendar, from appointments to "send that email". If something is missed, she reschedules it for the next day as a priority. Goals live in the notes on her phone, and she reviews them. If a short-term goal she set in January is still there, she asks herself what happened.

She also has a beautiful yearly ritual. She records a video of herself talking about what she's done and what she wants to have done by this time next year. Then she writes those things down as her goals.

When she worked in rehab, she ran journalling groups covering goal journalling, reflective journalling and gratitude journalling. She pointed out that writing gets your thoughts out of your head so they don't build up inside you. It also keeps your brain working at a time when technology spells everything for us. It doesn't need to be pretty, either. Her handwriting is messy, and so is mine.

Action: Tonight, write down three things you're grateful for. Tomorrow morning, write down your goals for the day.

Outcome: You start and finish each day with clarity.

Lesson 6: Choose your people carefully, then ask them to mentor you

Insight: Nyachan has always been selective about who she surrounds herself with. She looks for people whose values align with hers: truth, social justice, growth, kindness, gratitude and a bit of a silly side. She credits much of what she's achieved to the people she admires, who challenged her, connected her or simply believed in her. She doesn't want yes-man friendships. She wants people who'll tell her how it is.

To find mentors, she says you need to put yourself out there and share your story. During a coaching course, she was asked to message someone she wanted as a mentor and someone she wanted to mentor. She did both straight away, and people were receptive. Her script is simple: say hi, tell them truthfully what you admire about their work, and ask if they'd like to catch up. If they can't, they'll often connect you to someone who can.

For coaches like me, her advice was to listen and not assume, because everyone's different. She also encouraged sharing your own stories of what worked and what didn't. Stories stick, and one day a client might remember yours and try it.

Action: Message one person whose values you admire this week. Tell them what you appreciate about them and ask if they'd like to catch up.

Outcome: You start building the people around you who will help you grow.

Lesson 7: Joy and gratitude make you steadier

Insight: Nyachan calls herself the gratitude queen. Her joy isn't loud. It's a grounded feeling that lets everything else become noise, so when she says "I'm okay", she means it. Problems are still inconvenient, but her response is: if not me, then who? She's grateful for her life in the refugee camps and for everything she's been through since.

She compared life to Temple Run: the challenges keep coming, and she meets each one with "okay, what's next?" For her, winning is every day she's healthy, she's with her kids and she's building a culturally responsive mental health service. It's also noticing that the things that annoyed her yesterday no longer bother her. She talks to herself as her own best friend. She also holds herself accountable without being harsh.

On rejection, she uses it at work to re-evaluate her approach and come back stronger. If one person says no, she goes to someone else.

Action: Next time something goes wrong, name one thing about the situation you can be grateful for before deciding what to do next.

Outcome: You meet challenges from a grounded place rather than a reactive one.

Quick wins

• List what's going well in your life right now.
• Write three things you're grateful for before bed.
• Put every task into your calendar so it's not sitting in your head.
• Record a short video to your future self about this year's goals.
• Message one person you'd love to learn from.

Closing insight

What stayed with me from this conversation is how much Nyachan does with so much grace. She's built a centre from one grant application written overnight. She's training practitioners, running outreach and planning grief and healing work that helps her community reconnect with traditional ways of grieving together. Through it all, she's grounded by gratitude.

Her reminder that you might already be okay is worth sitting with. You don't need the perfect life to have good mental health. You need to know where you are, look after the people around you and keep moving forward one day at a time.

Connect with Nyachan

You can find support through the Nas Recovery Centre in Cranbourne West. Nyachan says it's open Monday to Wednesday, 9am to 5pm, for drug and alcohol, mental health or anything else you'd like to talk about. You can also connect with Nyachan on LinkedIn.

Listen to the full episode

The full conversation is on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, or press play at the top of this page.

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