It is a salient fact: one in five Australians will face mental health challenges this year but less than 50 per cent of us will seek help.
‘Which is why,’ says Mr James Walsh, PDHPE teacher and Fletcher House leader, ‘we want to give a big shout out and congratulate our whole school community for the mighty 282,676 pushups completed, and $22,340 raised in this year’s Push for Better mental health initiative run by The Push Up Challenge.
‘Whether you donated, completed the pushups, started a positive mental health conversation with your classmates or played cheer squad by encouraging those participants in the challenge, well done.’
The Push-Up Challenge is Australia’s largest mental health and fitness event. Working to remove the stigma around talking about mental health, participants are invited to fundraise for their favourite mental health charity by completing a set number of pushups in the month of June. This number represents the number of lives lost to suicide the preceding year. Suicide continues to be the leading cause of death for people in Australia aged 15-44.
‘Special mention and thanks must go to Oliver R (Year 12) and his Fletcher mentor group for their work in launching and facilitating this successful initiative,’ says Mr Walsh.
‘Fletcher House had the most participants with 34 who did 41,562 pushups. Bavin was second with 23 participants and 25,638 pushups, and Prescott was third with 21 participants who completed 26,289 pushups.’
Kelynack House was the college’s Push for Better fundraising champion, collecting more than $6000. Bavin, Cooper, Fletcher, Gilligan, Le Couteur, Morrison, Moulton, Prescott and Whitaker Houses all raised more than $1000 each.
‘Well done and congratulations to all these boys and another special mention to Mr Ian McPherson, Head of Bavin House and Visual Arts teacher, who also took part and raised more than $1000,’ added Mr Walsh.
‘Most importantly, the conversation about mental health challenges was prominent each day of this hugely worthwhile challenge which encourages us to continue to get active each day and to continue the positive conversations around the mental health challenges we face in society.’
Started in 2017, The Push Up Challenge has raised more than $50 million for mental health services and programs across Australia with more than 700,000 participants knocking out one billion pushups for the charity. This year, NSW completed the most pushups, with more than 84 million clocked and $3 million dollars raised. Nationally, Australians completed over 317 million pushups and raised more than $12.4 million.
