Michael Elwan Featured in UNE News: Leading Multicultural Lived Experience Leadership in Mental Health

I’m honoured to share that I’ve been featured in UNE News in an article titled Inspiring Change from the Ground Up, highlighting my journey from lived experience to leadership in mental health and suicide prevention.

The story traces my early life in Alexandria, Egypt, where I became a caregiver at 14 after my father - a former Air Force General - was left blind by a stroke. Following his death, I cared for my mother, who lived with severe mental health challenges, until her death by suicide. Those years shaped everything I do today.

When I migrated to Australia, I carried both grief and purpose. I studied accounting, business, and later social work to understand not just systems, but the human stories behind them. Step by step, I built Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs), an independent practice offering counselling, therapy, coaching, supervision, and consultancy that integrates lived experience, cultural responsiveness, and system change.

The UNE feature explores how multicultural lived experience leadership in mental health can transform the way we understand care, inclusion, and recovery. It highlights the link between personal story and structural change - how lived experience can influence not just empathy, but education, policy, and leadership.

My PhD, supervised by Professor Russell Roberts, Dr Belinda Cash, and Dr Tania Pearce, builds on this foundation; focusing on lived experience leadership in mental health. My goal is simple: to help shape systems that treat culture and experience not as barriers, but as wisdom.

To everyone who has shared their story, struggled in silence, or turned pain into purpose - this recognition belongs to you too.

🔗 Read the full article here

Based in Perth, WA, LEXs provides telehealth counselling across Australia for individuals, couples, and NDIS participants. Services extend to Social Work supervision, Peer Work supervision, training, and keynote speaking on men’s mental health, CaLD community wellbeing, and culturally responsive suicide prevention; helping people and organisations make mental-health care more compassionate, inclusive, and effective. LEXs provides services across Australia, supporting clients in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, and beyond. To learn more about our work across Australia, visit LEXs' services page.