Rachel Downie On Using Technology To Address The Student Mental Health Crisis

Rachel Downie is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Stymie Pty Ltd. An Educator of 30 years, Rachel created Stymie in 2013, following the loss of a student to suicide.

Stymie is an anonymous online tool that provides a confidential channel for young people to report all kinds of harm, enabling schools to respond directly, promptly and proactively.

Beyond her work at Stymie, Rachel is actively engaged with various organisations and advocacy groups to promote online safety, mental health awareness, and responsible digital citizenship. As a contestant on the 2021 Brains vs Brawn Australian Survivor, Rachel had the opportunity to highlight the prevalence of, and harm caused by, online trolling.

Rachel was recognised for her work and passion in 2020 by being named Queensland's Australian of the Year and has recently been awarded a Churchill Fellowship. She has a vision for a world where young people have access to the help they need, always. All Ways.

Rachel discusses tackling the stigma preventing students from reporting mental health issues in Australian schools and empowering young people to support each other through humanising the technology they use.

Highlights from the interview (listen to the podcast for full details)

[Sarah Ripper] - To start off, could you please share a bit about your background and what led you to where you are today?

[Rachel Downie] - Before I begin, I always like to start with a wellness warning, because my founding intentions were driven by the suicide of a student. If you're not having a great day or are not in a good space, maybe listen to this podcast at a time when you are. If you need too, reach out to somebody, because you might feel affected by the things I talk about. Essentially, a Year Nine boy, somebody that was under my care as a teacher directly, died by suicide when I was working in education. I knew that there was something going on with him (and we hear this story a lot more now than we did then) but he was just too frightened to tell us what it was. We didn't get any information from the students at the time, but after he died, they told us he was being bullied, he was experiencing family violence and that he had come to school and told kids he didn't want to be here anymore. Those conversations with students were so confronting, because I was dealing with kids who felt like it was their fault. I was dealing with kids who had been awful to him who also thought it was their fault, and then obviously an en masse grief situation occurred which I felt was preventable. That is what sowed the seed, because in talking to lots of students I just felt driven to do something about this.

As a teacher, I recognised in that moment also that students are now living their lives in virtual villages. We don’t have very much to do with them now at a time where I still believe we need to be having a lot of input into their lives.

We're living in a situation where we've got 14-year-olds dealing with massive life problems of other 14-year-olds and themselves, and they're not worldly enough to do it. I spoke to lots of students and gathered ideas from them on how we could stop this from happening. They said if you want to do something, it needs to be online because we're all connected and accessible 24 hours a day. The biggest thing they said was it needs to be anonymous, because they were potentially going to need to make sensitive notifications, such as about a best friend self-harming. That's where I came up with the idea for Stymie, it was developed with a lot of student input.

How did you turn this idea into a reality, a social business generating impact?

Honestly, I just tell people I'm this old lady from Buderim. People who know me well say I'm this old lesbian from Buderim! I've had people say, "you can't say that" but I'm very proud of my LGBT community. I honestly am a human who had something big happen in their lives who has decided to honour that in some way. I am a creative person, problem solver, forward as well as behind thinker (which I think is important in this space), and I wanted to make something that served the people it was going to help. The biggest thing making this successful is it has a strong student voice behind it. There are lots of products which say, "we cater for our clients," but in my eyes these are bullshit. I don't think a lot of people are catering well for their clients’ needs. But especially in the youth mental health space, it’s important that youth are at the centre of helping you build stuff. I did that then I just started hitting the floorboards myself.

Australian Youth Mental Health Crisis Rachel Downie.jpg

A very big part of our success is I built a piece of technology but didn't just want to give that to the kids and say, “off you go.” I've seen how they use Snapchat, TikTok, and other social media because and have had to deal with horrific things in my roles in schools and managing students. I wanted to try and find a way to humanise the technology, which is what I've been begging parents to do for years. I didn't want to build a piece of technology that could hurt people or kids could break without educating them. Schools from the beginning were not allowed to use Stymie unless they had an education day. One of our speakers or myself will go into a school and talk about empathy, kindness, and the fact that as young people, you're responsible for your safety here. Let's be empowered and make this an awesome place to be every day, because that's your job, you're the boss of what it feels like to be here. We try to get kids excited about being the guardians of their culture of care. We have two things working in our business model, we have that education component which is mandatory (and the schools pay for that), and then they pay for access to the platform. The educational piece has been super successful, and I see myself as responsible for the climate in a classroom.

I'm responsible for the children, whether they're involved in Stymie or not, and I've always felt like it is my job to empower young people to know themselves. I used to look around and ask, “why isn't someone doing something about this problem?” then one day I realised, I’m a someone, and to me, that epitomises being an entrepreneur.

Lily Tomlin (a comedian) said this, and I feel like that's what has happened with Stymie. I was a bit cynical; relationships with parents in schooling is basically out the window now and watching kids’ mental health spiral out of control has been awful to see over the last five or six years. Many kids are falling through the net, so I was sitting around thinking, "why isn't someone doing something about this?" When the student died, that was my ‘someone’ moment, and the irony of this is I feel like teaching is helping young people discover their ‘someoneness’. That’s the job of being a good teacher, and it is a privilege to be part of that journey with a young person.

What challenges and possibilities have you observed in the youth mental health space for positive change?

Honestly, when we got our figures from last year, I felt sick. Last year we delivered 95,201 notifications, and 36,000 of those notifications were about bullying and peer to peer harm (which was inclusive of harmful peer to peer sexual behaviours). We got 7,000 reports of illegal activity, 5,000 reports about sexual harassment, and 5,000 about self-harm. We had kids talk about physical fights and 4,300 notifications where kids said they need to speak to a counsellor. With Stymie, kids can make a notification on behalf of someone else, which might be something like, "my friend Sarah has told me someone is sexually interfering with her and I'm not sure what to do about this. She's in grade nine and here is all the evidence I have.” That allows the notification to be anonymous so they can still be your friend and support you through the process. Students can also put their hands up and say, "I need help." We talk about self-help seeking a lot, and it's become a cliche, but we are in a mental health crisis with young people now. Everybody says they know, but the reason people are like that is because they don’t know what to do about it. It's a little bit like the bullying stuff. Since 2008, we've known one in four students are hurt, harmed, or bullied at school, and we haven't been able to fix it. Part of it is because of this culture we have in Australia around speaking up. We don’t tend to say, "don't treat people like that," or "hey, I need some help." I went to Rewire, a youth driven mental health weekend a couple of weeks ago where young people organised the event. I ran a panel at that event, but one of the biggest problems I heard about is that young people don't feel safe. They're concerned with consent; we just had a report released three weeks ago stating 30 percent of 18-19-year-olds are experiencing sexual violence in relationships. 30 f**king percent (excuse my mouth).

Stymie Social Enterprise Student Mental Health.

What the hell is going on? The Australian Child Maltreatment Study released four weeks ago stated up to over 30% of Australian children have experienced some core form of child maltreatment. Before everyone freaks out about that, that is inclusive of witnessing family violence. I know all those facts are downers, but in this are opportunities for the helpers. There's a cool quote which says when things go bad, look up, you'll see the helpers. With Stymie, I feel like I'm a helper, and I get to share a lot of space with people who are helping. We're all very busy now, but people working on this problem which is great. A couple of months ago, I received a Churchill Fellowship, and this is in direct relation to the impact I want to have in this youth mental health space and empowering kids to speak up in the heat of the moment. We have this Australian culture, and I'm in my 50s so my generation sucked at doing this, where we have not had the guts or courage to be able to say stuff like, "mate, I love you, but the way you talk about women is not cool." We can’t say things like, "we've been friends since primary school, and I love you, but your racist jokes are not acceptable." We don't do that in Australia, we just think "oh, that's just Jim, he speaks about all women like that," or "that's just Aunty Mary, she doesn't mean anything by it." That's a problem because we haven't modelled those positive behaviours for our kids, and we tend not to stand up to stuff because that makes us a dobber or a snitch. My question is always what does it make us if we stand by and watch someone get hurt? Why don't we have as derogatory thought processes around doing that as somebody who stands up and says, "hey, this is not okay." That person gets smashed in schools, why isn't the person who's hurting humans suffering the same thing? I'm not saying I want people to be hurt, but why aren't we thinking it's great somebody has the courage to say something. Why can't we reverse it? With the Churchill Fellowship I'm going to seven different countries to study schools which have low incidences of peer-to-peer harm. Australia’s sits at 30%, all the countries I'm visiting only sit between 11-13%. I'm going to see what they're doing differently and will bring it back to Australia. We're going to write a program called No Hate Here Mate, and this will have a massive impact in schools. I want this to be a national non-negotiable program because we've missed out on changing the Australian social norm of not dobbing on our mates even if we know they’re being bad. I want kids to develop the courage to say, “we don't treat people like that here." What we need to do is identify how kids do that, because I don't think we know. I've got some great ideas, and I'm going to make these into something that's going to have a huge impact on young people in schools. No Hate Here Mate is its name. You know what entrepreneurs are like, I've already made the Instagram page, got the website up and running, and I'm just so excited! That's how I visualise things, I must make it this tangible project, so I know what I'm putting into that bucket.

What inspiring projects or initiatives have you come across recently creating a positive social change?

There are heaps. I was selected this year to participate in Coralus, and we're one of the ventures who are going to get some funding to help us scale even more. During that process, I met so many socially impactful businesses like Pleasant State here on the Sunshine Coast. They're a venture who have created these products you just add water to which are great for the environment. I met people doing working with victims of sex trafficking, and they are then taking them to places in Cambodia and training them ethically in how to make clothing (Avodah Global is their name). Sam from ParentTV is making this documentary interrogating our roles as parents, which is so confronting and brave of her to do. I've met people who are rebranding how we move garbage around the world, and obviously along the way I've had the opportunity to do deep dives into Livin and those people in schools doing good work, like the Cyber Safety Project and Line Wise. It’s easy to feel good now, because while there are parts of the world that feel bad, you can go onto a founder's site or look at social impact projects and what people are doing for the world. I have the privilege as this old lesbian from Buderim to have a chat with these people sometimes! I built my business out of my garage at home and literally spent five years delivering all this education to schools for free. I didn't charge for my time for five years so I could develop a reputation where schools would give me money later.

Again, we talk about the ripple effect a lot, and people don't believe in their ability to generate that. Some of it is because the world feels heavy, but I also have the privilege of working with young people and their brains. I've worked in education for 30 years, and every day they blew my mind with their ideas.

Anybody can start a business now, anybody can jump online and build their business, and young people are doing some great stuff as well. They impress me every day.

To finish off, what books or resources would you recommend to our listeners?

I get asked a lot for the biggest piece of advice I have for people. I know you didn't ask for advice, and I'll recommend some books soon, but please be careful how you set up your company with money. Even if you don't have much money, make sure you set up all your structures, so you're protected and doing the right thing in terms of paying yourself. As soon as you can start to try and do that stuff; I have been hit very hard from not doing that. I think business is mostly about human behaviour. Building a business as an entrepreneur is about human behaviour. One of my favourite books I've read this year is Surrounded by Idiots. It's an awful title, but it’s basically about understanding the people you come across who are difficult to understand. There’s another book I would recommend called Difficult Conversations.

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When you're in the entrepreneurial space, even if you're not the boss you have to be the boss for a while. The hardest thing about being a boss is having courageous dialogue with people because we're so worried about making the wrong decision with other humans.

Anything Simon Sinek has written is an absolute go to for me as well. Years ago, I read The E-Myth, and I don't know if it still has currency, but I still do revisit concepts in that book. It talks about that transition from being a pie maker who wants to make pies everybody can eat who can't transition to scale. As we know, most entrepreneurs fail when we try to scale, so the E-Myth is a fantastic foundational book I revisit quite a lot. There are other great books like The Lean Startup as well. You'll have lots of people who aren't supportive of your idea, and this is something we talk about a lot. A lot of people will say, "isn't that risky?" I’ve had lots of people tell me I could become a principal, and that I’m leaving this safe environment by becoming an entrepreneur. I think I became quite institutionalised. You are going to have lots of people giving you downer what if questions, so enrich your mind with podcasts and positive things to help you believe in yourself. I would say if I can do stuff like this, anybody can.