Award-winning social worker and national advisor Michael Elwan reflects on receiving the WA Mental Health Award 2025 for Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration, supported by the WA Mental Health Commission.

I’m deeply humbled to share that I’ve been featured in the WA Mental Health Commission’s Understanding Lived Experience  series, where I speak about organisational readiness and lived experience leadership  - and what it truly means to commit to the WA lived experience peer workforce . As an Egyptian-Australian mental health professional and someone whose life has been profoundly shaped by trauma, caregiving, loss and cultural dislocation , I’ve come to understand that chang

I’m humbled and honoured to share that I’ve been appointed as an inaugural member of the Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG) , established by the Mental Health Commission of Western Australia . This appointment brings a unique opportunity to represent multicultural perspectives and advocate for culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities within Western Australia’s mental health, alcohol and other drug (AOD), and suicide prevention systems. As someone from an..