Fight team walking the talk on mental health

It's why the Oni Fight Team crew are determined to ensure that the cage is the only place its members fight battles alone, teaming up with local suicide prevention charity #Talk2MeBro to ensure mental health is not a taboo topic within gym walls.

"Our team has always encouraged open discussion of mental health," Oni's Emilee Della-Libera explains.

"Martial arts focuses on physical, mental and spiritual development. We work to encourage the combination of physical and mental development everyday within the gym.

"Martial arts, particularly things like MMA sparring, causes a natural physiological response (fight or flight) so the mental and emotional development is just as, if not more, important during an individual's martial arts journey.

"We encourage our team to process the emotions as they arise and we usually will end sparring sessions in a group sit-down to chat and discuss this together. We have exchanged our own experiences and struggles, which has led us to connect and bond more together.

"Though at times we may have felt alone in our struggles, upon sharing we've come to realise and value the support we have surrounding us."

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It's an ethos the Oni team have taken a step further in inviting #Talk2MeBro into the gym for two mental health evenings, with more on the horizon, in an effort to broaden the discussion.

"The evenings with Talk2MeBro have always been incredible and we're definitely looking to hold more," Della-Libera said.

"We've had Jack, Freddy and Ryan from Talk2MeBro guide our team through educating discussions of mental health awareness and suicide prevention. We value and appreciate them enormously.

"They've encouraged open discussions of individual experiences, as well as sharing their own which has helped our team connect to them and to each other more.

"Mental health awareness is progressively becoming more of a priority within society and I would love to see more gyms get involved with external mental health organisations and professionals to provide more resources for their members.

"There's so much we're doing now, but there's still so much that can be done."

Facilitator Jack Brown says #Talk2MeBro's presence in the combat sports fraternity is no coincidence given the unique challenges it presents to partiticpants at all levels.

"A big part of it is in those areas you often find the 'big, strong people' that often feel like they can't chat about what's going on with them because they're supposed to be invincible," Brown said.

"We just create a space to talk about, not only fighting and that masculine side of things, but just being able to be vulnerable. Rather than that normal response 'yeah, I'm all good', being able to connect and chat when you're not doing so good makes you better in and out of the ring or octagon.

"We don't just sit down and have a kumbya and talk about our feelings, that wouldn't work really well at all. What we do is incorporate some games into it, usually some story-telling from the facilitators.

"We answer questions people may have or where they can get help. We're not mental health professionals or psychologists, but what we have done over the years is build a great network of resources to refer people to.

"We go through some stats and myths around suicide and things in that realm, then we do often get around to an open forum to be able to chat about where people are at."

The Oni Fight Team are part of the more than 27,000 people Talk2MeBro has reached with its ever-expanding programs since its foundation in the wake of much-loved local man Matt Simpson's tragic death in 2018.

"Matty was a big tatted dude, a really masculine bloke who never talked about how he was going and where he was at until, unfortunately, it got the better of him," Brown said.

"He was like a brother to me and it was one of those things where his amazing wife Kristy and all of us sat around and said 'if only he'd talked to us'. That's where she came up with the [Talk2MeBro] slogan.

"It was initially going to be something the pallbearers would wear just to raise a bit of awareness. From there it moved into mentoring some youth in the Illawarra to be able to help and get in early.

"Then it moved into different programs for sporting clubs and all different types of communities tackling topics like how to have a tough conversation with a mate who might be struggling.

"There's good resources out there but not many that deal with suicide in particular. We provide the resources as well as the myths and statisitics around suicide, the biggest killer [of people] under 45 at the moment."

The organisation recently became the beneficiary of a $10,000 community grant to expand its programs, while tickets to its annual fundraising dinner on Friday night sold out in less than a week.

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It's funding the team plans to utilise to take its mission national.

"Since that launch in 2018 we've facilitated our group sessions to 27,000 people, that's sitting down face-to-face sessions with only a handful of facilitators," Brown said.

"Since we started it's definitely growing because it's one of those things that is so needed, especially after COVID. We're not really surprised it's blown up as much as it has because we know there's so many people out there struggling.

"That's why we want to build. We know the impact we've had with eight facilitators so the more we can train up, the greater the impact we can have. The funding will allow us to train up more facilitators to go to more places, more courses for those facilitators.

"We're not just local [to Illawarra] anymore, we've been to Melbourne, we've been to Darwin twice, we've been out to Indigenous communties like Brewarrina and more central NSW.

"We're so humbled to have been able to impact so many lives and we want to keep expanding nationally to allow our programs to be for absolutely everybody."

The Mercury, in partnership with the Illawarra Academy Of Sport and presenting sponsor Illawarra Credit Union, is hosting the Illawarra Sports Awards, to be held on Thursday, November 10 at the Fraternity Club.

TICKETS: Purchase individual tickets or tables at https://events.humanitix.com/illawarra-sports-awards