Betty Kitchener


Betty Ann Kitchener is an Australian Mental Health educator who co-founded Mental health first aid training along with Professor Anthony Jorm.

Career

Betty Kitchener trained as a teacher, counsellor and nurse. She is also a mental health consumer advocate, having experienced recurrent major depression. especially within the workplace motivated her to want to change community attitudes towards mental illness. She has held academic appointments at the Australian National University and the University of Melbourne. Until the end of 2016, she was CEO of Mental Health First Aid Australia. She held an honorary Adjunct Professorship at Deakin University from 2013 to 2019.

Community activism

In 2000, she founded Mental health first aid training in Canberra, together with her husband Anthony Jorm, who is a mental health researcher. Mental health first aid is a 12-hour face-to-face training program for members of the public to learn how to provide initial assistance to someone developing a mental health problem or in a mental health crisis. This program spread across Australia and by 2011 over 170,000 Australian adults had received the training. By 2015, this had reached 350,000 and by 2025 1.5 million. The training has been adapted to various cultural groups in Australia, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, Vietnamese Australians and Chinese Australians. The training program has spread to many other countries, including Bangladesh, Bermuda, Canada, China, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Japan, Malta, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Pakistan, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, the United States and Wales. By 2025, over 8 million persons had been trained in Mental Health First Aid globally.

Awards and honours

Kitchener has received many awards and honours for her work on Mental health first aid, including:

Publications

Some of her publications are the following:
  • Kitchener, B.A. & Jorm, A.F.. Mental Health First Aid Manual. Canberra: Centre for Mental Health Research.
  • Kitchener, B.A. & Jorm, A.F.. Mental health first aid training for the public: evaluation of effects on knowledge, attitudes and helping behavior. BMC Psychiatry, 2, 10.
  • Kitchener, B.A., Jorm, A.F. & Kelly, C.M.. Mental Health First Aid Manual. Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
  • Kelly, C.M., Kitchener, B.A. & Jorm, A.F.. Youth Mental Health First Aid: A Manual for Adults Assisting Young People. Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
  • Hart, L.M., Kitchener, B.A., Jorm, A.F. & Kanowski, L.G.. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health First Aid Manual. Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
  • Kitchener, B.A. & Jorm, A.F.. Mental health first aid: An international programme for early intervention. Early Intervention in Psychiatry, 2, 55-61.
  • Jorm, A.F. & Kitchener, B.A.. Noting a landmark achievement: Mental Health First Aid training reaches 1% of Australian adults. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 45, 808-813.
  • Hart, L.M., Kelly, C.M., Kitchener, B.A. & Jorm, A.F.. teen Mental Health First Aid: A manual for young people helping their friends. Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
  • Kitchener, B.A., Jorm, A.F. & Kelly, C.M.. Older Person Mental Health First Aid: A Manual for Assisting People Aged 65+. Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
  • Jorm, A.F., Kitchener, B.A. & Reavley, N.J.. Mental Health First Aid training: lessons learned from the global spread of a community education program. World Psychiatry, 18, 142-143.