Standing up for social justice

Changemaker Priscilla Brice founded charity All Together Now to address systemic racism in Australia. She’s now turned her attention to mental health as CEO of BEING, using her lived experience to advocate for better outcomes.

Given Priscilla Brice has spent the past two decades fighting for human rights, it’s perhaps surprising that she got her start in investment banking and stockbroking.

“I haven’t always been a social justice advocate,” Brice said. Leaving school in the early nineties during a recession forced Brice to take the first permanent position she was offered – working at a stockbroker’s office in Brisbane. This led to a role in investment banking in London, which she held for several years.

Looking for a new venture, Brice trained as a website developer, which set her towards the not-for-profit sector. She worked with Oxfam Australia to implement its first comprehensive digital strategy before moving to ANTaR, where she delivered social impact campaigns on issues critical to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

In 2010, Brice founded harm prevention charity All Together Now, which aims to promote racial equity and effectively challenge racism through education and innovative projects. “It was a huge, overwhelming task,” Brice reflected. “I persisted and for 12 years sought different interventions to chip away at what is still an ingrained, systemic problem.”

She is now CEO of BEING – Mental Health Consumers, a NSW-based peak organisation representing the voices of people with mental health challenges.

In this week’s Changemaker, Brice explains how her lived experience guides her work; the key issues Australia needs to address to better support mental health; and why patience is critical to systemic change.

What does this role mean to you?

This is the first role I’ve had where I’m advocating as a person with lived experience. 

Stepping into this position, it has been incredibly useful to have also worked in an ally role, because I now understand both sides of being an advocate – the role of the ally and the role of the person with lived experience. Each role brings complementary types of power. When you bring an advocate and a person with lived experience together, as activists they are so much more powerful than either one alone.

As a result, I’ve invested time in getting to know and work with BEING’s sister organisation, Mental Health Carers NSW, as we will need to work closely together to achieve the social impact that’s needed. I’ve also been meeting with a lot of other state and federal mental health organisations to see how we could all advocate together for some much-needed reforms.

How does your lived experience as a consumer of the mental health system inform your work?

I’m an autistic person with life-long mental health challenges, so my experiences have been complex. I find it very difficult to separate my autistic experience from my mental health challenges, so that’s why I speak about them together, even though being autistic is not a mental health diagnosis.

I’ve had multiple interactions with the mental health system throughout my adult life, across three states in Australia as well as the United Kingdom. I think this personal lived experience as a mental health consumer provides me with insight into other people’s mental health experiences. 

I understand, through my own experiences, that it’s not just about navigating the system that is difficult, it is also dealing with the emotional labour of having to stand up to ableism; having to explain or justify my behaviour or the way I think; and even trying to do everyday tasks can sometimes be challenging.

Having said all that, I count myself as a very privileged mental health consumer, being a white, university-educated person working in a senior executive role. Having this privilege means that I have a responsibility to advocate for anybody who doesn’t share my societal privilege, and especially my neurokin and other people with mental health challenges, so we can each reach our full potential in whatever form that looks like.

How does Australia fare when it comes to supporting mental health, and is there room for improvement?

There’s so much room for improvement in supporting people with mental health challenges. 

Since working at BEING, I’ve been hearing from mental health consumers about the multitude of ways the system is failing them, or has done in the past. In particular, seclusion and restraint is a very important topic for mental health consumers, and it is used more than it should be, and some would argue these practices shouldn’t be used at all. 

The data shows us that the NSW mental health system is not meeting its targets for seclusion and restraint. Clearly there’s a systemic problem that urgently needs to be addressed.

Another area of concern is the Medicare gap, with the cost of simply seeing a GP to discuss a mental health issue being too expensive for many, let alone the cost of seeing a psychologist. 

BEING has been advocating that the federal government’s recent reduction in Medicare-subsidised psychologist visits from 20 sessions per year down to 10 is misguided, and that these limits are not evidence-based and don’t take into account a holistic approach to supporting people with their mental health challenges.

All of the mental health activists who have gone before me have achieved very significant gains over the past decades. I really do feel like I’m standing on the shoulders of giants. Without them, my role, indeed the organisation I work for, wouldn’t even exist. However, despite decades of activism, there are still human rights violations taking place within the mental health system and these need to be challenged and changed.

What is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt working in the for-purpose sector?

It’s difficult to rate all the lessons I’ve learned and nail it down to the biggest lesson. 

Certainly one thing I’ve learned is to be very patient. Systemic change seems to be multi-generational, so instead of me trying to change everything all at once and feeling overwhelmed, I can only do my part, which will be one link in the chain of activism that will eventually lead to systemic change.

Tell us about what led you to founding All Together Now and the impact the charity has had in our community.

While at ANTaR I learned about the research of Yin Paradies and Kevin Dunn, and was astounded that there was so much useful research in Australia about the types of racism and potential ways of addressing it, but it seemed that very few organisations were interested in applying that knowledge.

At that time, the media was silent about racism, there wasn’t a full-time Race Discrimination Commissioner, and there wasn’t a not-for-profit organisation seeking to address systemic racism beyond those focusing on First Nations communities. I decided to start up All Together Now, an evidence-based and nationally-focused not-for-profit organisation with the aim of educating Australians about racism. 

I was fortunate to work with a fantastic team at All Together Now, and together we achieved a great deal. One of the organisation’s major achievements during my time as managing director was to put a spotlight on right-wing extremism when all the federal government wanted to talk about was Islamic extremism, and subsequently training hundreds of people about how to identify and respond to right-wing extremism. 

We also drew attention to racism in the mainstream media by collecting and publishing data about the tactics the media use to perpetuate racism and the impact this racism has on groups and individuals. 

Earlier on in the organisation’s history we had strong success in encouraging people to have constructive conversations about racism which – around 10 years ago – was an innovative anti-racism strategy in the Australian context. We ran the award-winning One Parramatta project, and launched a mobile app called Everyday Racism which went on to win two United Nations awards. 

Social change doesn’t happen by one organisation alone, so I think all I can say is that All Together Now has contributed to changing the community’s dialogue about racism.

What motivates you?

I’m strongly motivated by fairness and respect. When I see something happening that contradicts my values, then I feel compelled to take action. I feel I have a personal responsibility to do something when I see social injustice, unethical or disrespectful behaviour.

I’m inspired by fellow neurokin activists, people like Greta Thunberg, Hannah Gadsby, Grace Tame, and many other autistic/ADHD womxn who have the same tendency to speak out about systemic or interpersonal injustice as I do.

How do you unwind after work?

Knitting, which I do almost every evening without fail, even on hot summer nights. I also enjoy sewing my own clothes and pottering in my veggie garden.

What do you want your legacy to look like?

I would like to see people understand the various types of power they hold in society, and to use their power to uphold people’s human rights rather than diminish them. If I can look back on my life and say I’ve contributed my time and energy to advance social justice and equity in this way, then that would be amazing.