WA Mental Health Commission Feature: Michael Elwan on Organisational Readiness and Lived Experience Leadership

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 change isn’t just structural - it must be cultural.

It’s not enough to update policies. True transformation happens when organisations:

• recruit based on principles like humanity, authenticity, mutuality, and diversity

• invest in meaningful education across all roles – not just peer roles

• embed cultural inclusion as a lived practice, not a checkbox

• honour lived experience as essential expertise, not optional insight

For me, centring lived experience leadership - especially in ways that reflect the rich diversity of our communities - is not just good practice. It’s justice. It’s healing. It’s how we create systems where no one feels unseen, misunderstood, or silenced in their pain.

This feature from the WA Mental Health Commission lived experience leadership series is just one small piece in a much larger movement. I share it in honour of my mother, who died by suicide, and for all those whose stories are still unfolding - and whose voices deserve to be heard, respected, and elevated.

Thank you to the WA Mental Health Commission for this opportunity and to everyone in the lived experience leadership community - past, present, and emerging - who continues to show us what real leadership looks like.

🔗 Watch the video here

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.