Honoured to Receive the 2025 WA Mental Health Award for Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration

This week, I was deeply honoured to receive the 2025 WA Mental Health Award for Lived Experience Impact & Inspiration, sponsored by the WA Mental Health Commission.

The award recognises the work I do through Lived Experience Solutions (LEXs) - supporting people and organisations to move from silence to safety, and from stigma to understanding. It celebrates the power of lived experience as both a source of healing and a driver of systemic change.

Through LEXs, I provide culturally-attuned counselling, mentoring, and consultancy for people navigating trauma, grief, migration, identity, and mental health challenges. Many of my clients come from culturally and linguistically diverse and faith-based communities, where traditional services have not always felt safe or accessible. Together, we work in ways that honour culture, family, and spirituality; creating new pathways to recovery that feel human and inclusive.

Beyond counselling, my work extends to advising national and state mental health systems so that policies and services reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

This award is meaningful because it recognises what I have long believed: that lived experience is not a limitation; it is leadership. When we bring our stories, cultures, and truths into the room, systems change.

To my clients, colleagues, and community - thank you for walking beside me, for your courage, and for reminding me daily why this work matters.

You can read more about the WA Mental Health Awards and the remarkable finalists on the WAAMH website

LEXs is Michael Elwan's Perth-based practice, working online across Australia. Services include training and workshops, lived experience consultancy, Social Work Supervision, Lived Experience Leadership Supervision, Frontline Supervision, therapy and keynote speaking. Training and workshops can be commissioned for organisational leaders, practitioners and frontline teams, and carers, families and communities. Explore LEXs services.