About Mary O'brien
Mary O'Brien is the founder of the Are You Bogged Mate? initiative, which she described as a program that travels to remote areas of Australia to talk to rural men about mental health in a "user friendly" and "irreverent" manner. O'Brien stated that she started the initiative after writing an opinion piece following the suicide of two men in her area. She has said her approach involves "breaking down the stigma" and connecting people to professional help, and she noted that she has received emails from men who sought support as a result.
In a separate capacity, O'Brien has worked as a social worker intern at the Mount Vernon Police Department. She said she decided to pursue a master's degree in social work after a near-death experience during the COVID-19 pandemic, during which she credited a hospital social worker with saving her life. O'Brien has also given a TEDx talk in which she discussed a "paradigm shift" approach to personal change, emphasizing the concept of seeing people "in their wholeness" rather than focusing on their difficulties. She has additionally served as an emcee for the Immeasurably More Women's Conference.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Mary O'brien's recent appearances.
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Transcript (1 segments)
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Mary O'Brien0:00
I was born and raised in California and relocated up here to the Northwest about 20 years ago. I've always had a heart for service, and I think where things really started to come into focus was when I almost lost my life a few years ago. I suffered some critical injuries that landed me in the ICU for a long time. This was during COVID, and during COVID one of the things that happened when people were in the hospital is they separated patients that were really sick from their family members. So people that were in the hospital really needing their in-person supports, they weren't getting it. We were all alone, with the exception of the hospital social worker. And I attribute really my life being saved to that person. She was really a concrete example of this unique form of social work where you're really helping people in dire circumstances. And I didn't feel alone anymore. I felt supported. Not only was she doing mental health counseling for myself and my family, but she was also this fierce advocate for the treatment that I was going to need to recover. So when I was out of the woods, I decided that is exactly what I want to do. So I began pursuing this master's in social work. I did a ton of research and found the best program that was available online that focused on clinical mental health, and that was Fordham University in New York City. And it's typically a three-year program to get your MSW in social work, and I persuaded admissions to let me fast-track it and do the degree in 16 months and just go double full-time so that I could get here faster. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. In my last year of college, they placed me in an internship and was placed here at the Mount Vernon Police Department. Coming into this internship, I had several assumptions, and I assumed that officers would use us a lot just for mental health crisis and we would go into a situation, we would de-escalate, and we would be out and no longer involved. It didn't take long to realize that I was being afforded an opportunity to utilize all of my skills. There's a vast array of things that we are doing, and realizing that within a few short weeks really sold me on this unique experience of serving within a police department. Had I stayed within hospital social work, I think it would have been very rewarding, it would have been very limiting to one type of care, and I cannot think of another profession in the social work field where I'm utilizing all of my skills all the time, all at once. It's been a real joy to work on the Mount Vernon Police Department. There's a great culture, a healthy culture here, and we've got so many different departments that are working together and get along really well. And I feel like the police department has just opened their arms to social workers. It's a marriage, if you will. It's a beautiful relationship where we're really trying to help law enforcement and they're really trying to help us and help other success.
