By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
IT’S not every day that someone receives a phone call from the National Australia Day Council about their nomination in the coveted Australian of the Year Awards and for Mark Haughton it was a shock he didn’t see coming.
“When you’re doing something that’s in your heart and watching others grow and develop skills through your help you just never stop to think other people notice what you’re doing,” the mental-health champion said.
Co-founder and director of the Beehive Foundation, Mark Haughton, 52, from Berwick is one of four nominees in the 2016 Victorian Local Hero award.
“I’m so honoured and I’m not sure how to describe the feeling – it’s heart-warming,” Mr Haughton said.
“People that know me would say I’ve never not got something to say, but I really am speechless,” he said.
Mr Haughton said he was looking forward to being able to use the national awards to get his positive self-esteem messages out to a broader young audience in the hope of moving his program interstate.
“I’m excited not only to meet other like-minded nominees but it’s like when you have written a song and you know it can affect people positively and you want to get it out there on iTunes.
“I want to be able to teach more people the life and preventative skills I have battled with myself and hear more stories and this can be a vehicle for Beehive to be able to do that,” he said.
Mr Haughton has lived in Berwick for 20 years and coached local football teams for most of his life.
So he said he was devastated to watch Casey’s youth suicide numbers increase.
“The City of Casey is chronic with youth suicide, with more than two youth suicides at the one school and that was the trigger for the Beehive Foundation and as a single parent I wanted to teach my own children,” he explained.
Growing up in a violent household in England, Mr Haughton said he’s always been told he has a “heightened sense of anxiety” and it was through his own fears and stress management that he has been able to help many others cope with life’s daily dramas.
“I didn’t learn how to react to pressure well and I would shrink away from it and the problems would just get bigger.
“I’ve been diagnosed as chronically depressed and through all of that, for some reason, I’ve always managed to get things done.
“It’s about changing your thinking patterns and I began to develop thinking strategies and that’s what the Beehive is about.
“We don’t focus on one problem but teach skills that relate to everything,” Mr Haughton said.
Mr Haughton has been able to write his own life experiences and have them explained medically by psychiatric clinician Alex Couley for his autobiography and the foundation’s booklets.
“Everything I write has a medical explanation by Alex in our programs.
“He puts my stories into an educational format which examines both sides of mental health,” Mr Haughton said.
Mr Haughton said his job has brought him to tears.
“Recently I had students running up to the white board writing things up on what affects them positively and negatively and one child wrote a ‘nice dinner on Sunday with family makes me feel good to start school on Monday’.
“And I actually shed a tear and thought ‘we’re getting through’,” he said.
The winners of each Victorian category will be announced on Wednesday 28 October and the finalists will be presented at the national award ceremony in Canberra on Australia Day next year.
